


Gardenia and Peonies

by Royalrastafariannaynays



Series: Wildbloom [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Horror, Character Death, Dragons, F/F, Fae & Fairies, Gay, Gratuitous use of herb names and flower meanings, If i didnt tag something and you want me to, Let me know please, Magic, Magic-Users, Mentions of miscarriage, Period-Typical Medicine, Pregnancy mentions - not a story plot point, SO GAY, The Language of Flowers, Victorian era, Violence, Vivid metaphors, Witchcraft, mature themes, rose is a witch, yeah its pretty cool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2018-12-08 05:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 41,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalrastafariannaynays/pseuds/Royalrastafariannaynays
Summary: And it is with haste that her smile wraps its way into your veins, like the sweet and cloying ichor of cherry wine, sending you into a happy stupor and bewitching you with its very flavor and manner of being.Rose is a centuries-old witch, living her life and crushing hard on the seamstress in town. But the forest seems to be murmuring to her. What could be happening?[[on hiatus officially;life stuff happens, yknow?]]





	1. Anemone

When you rise from slumber, it’s in a blanket cocoon like a chrysalis; you're still resting in here, still forming and developing. But you can leave whenever you like, from the safe and warm confines of this swaddle.

Limbs stretch out one after one; first the left arm, then the right. You turn onto your back, and gently unfold your knees. Awakening comes to you in bursts, and the misty air from a window draft brushes across your face.

It’s a cool caress, and you open your eyes to examine the lines of salt and the warding herbs and symbols above the door frame. It’s raining out.

As you stir, the butterfly wings of your dreams unfold from your back. You sit up, and take your first deep breath of the day. It's a yawn that fills your weapons of flight and pushes them out from the cocoon to dry in the sun. Beams of light filter into your single loft room. You have to remind yourself the wings aren’t actually there sometimes.

With each inhale through your nose, the wings pulse and fill and fluff and you sit up just a little straighter. Like tendrils of setae you gather yourself to you. Your facades, your life path, your knitting, and your tendency toward black coffee. Your knowledge of darkness comes next, and then your habit of sticking your tongue out when you try to undo knots. Your family, your friends long since passed, your list of tasks for the day, and your skill with arranging flowers.

And then comes the bad. All of the things that are wrong. Errors, social qualms, bad... habits. Your role as a midwife and cut-wife both. The lives you give and take with your medicines. The plants you were unable to keep alive. The darkened futures and sins you foretell. They weave themselves into the filament.

The cat hops up onto your bed. Jaspers doesn’t need to stand on his hind legs to brush against your chin; he’s far too big, and you are far too short for such a thing. It's time to start the day.

The butterfly metaphor is discarded on your pillow. You may have dreams of flight, but they will never come true.

You don't quite deserve that freedom anyhow.

 

* * *

 

You leave Jaspers lounging on your porch, napping in the sun, same as every other day. A champion mouser, but only for a portion of the day.

This morning, you are on the hunt for a queen bee as you go about your daily tasks. It is the right season for it, and having your own hive will make your dye garden bloom even more beautifully. Honey too can be used for so many wonderful things.

Your skin has been rubbed with a special bitter cream of your own making, so that they might not sting you. In your herb basket is a small jar in which she will rest. There is a little spell that you will cast that will attract a portion of her old hive to you, and from there it will build and flourish on its own.

As you hunt, you make sure to take into consideration the Dark One from whom you receive a portion of your energy to work your magic. It’s a part of her tithe that you spend some time thinking of her as you gather things for your spells and tinctures.

You find your queen for your hive.

It is a routine to think of the Horror, every time you go a-gathering. And every time, you happen to find something worthwhile. It is also the full moon tonight. This gathering is a special one, one of your Esbat, and the things you find today will be potent.

As well as the queen, you pluck an entire clutch of infertile lizard eggs from their nest. They are yellowed, amber-colored and left alone to themselves. Now, they are yours, to dry in the slot above your hearth, and make into the barest shriveled and calcified stones; they will be lovely talismans. Matched with a shock of rabbit fur and set with some rose quartz pebbles, they will help women with their pregnancies.

For a price, of course.

You have to live, and you have to buy some things you cannot make yourself.

Nothing is without its price.

A bird twitters overhead, and a beetle scuttles away on a dry leaf.

Your eyes cast upward, the sun peeking through the foliage to pierce your eyes.

The soft-woven woolen cloak you wear falls back from your shoulders and short-cropped hair. Its black material is riddled with the fluff from weeds and the seeds of plants; it will have to be cleaned, soon. You’ll have to make time. Maybe tonight? You could imbue it with something to aid you in the winter days coming. It would be good to do that tonight.

The moor breeze is a humid chill on the back of your neck.

As you straighten, back creaking, you catch the barest movement out of the corner of your eye.

At first you think it one of those white-footed black foxes that scamper about in the twilight hours. They like to dig little holes behind your house. They’re also the reason why you stopped keeping chickens. But… it’s not any fox.

It’s her.

Kanaya Maryam. The woman who comes to you for dye only. She’s a significant and never-changing part of your days, coming by twice every moon for nearly half a decade.

A mystery, she is. Tall – taller than you, with black hair always twisted up into a knot behind her head. So… human, and yet the most beautiful woman you’ve seen in nearly fifty years. Right now, she’s walking along the path from the forest clearing. There is a bundle of flowers in her basket.

Those flowers that the young children go and pick for their paramours; yellow and brown, a few pink. Maybe she’s selling some new dresses for the young ladies? It is the marrying season, after all. Maybe those colors look good with white. She is the town’s tailor, after all. And the town has grown a good amount in the past decade. She’ll be doing more than just tailoring preexisting clothes, soon.

A single sunbeam hits her through the trees, at just the right angle, and her gently sloped face is cast into relief. She is pale as snow, and what a thing to behold. Eyes so green they might be jade. Hair blacker than your damned soul, and fingers more delicate than a harpist’s.

She has caught the light, and caught your eye. So many times, she’s caught your eye.

So many times, she’s caught your eye.

It makes you inhale deeply, and then shakily let it out.

She may be gorgeous, but you will never have her.

She is ‘normal’. No magic, not a creature of any kind that you can tell. Just an ethereal beauty in your life, that doesn’t even seem to need to pull her boots out of the muck as she walks. She will marry a young man in town, or a visiting noble, and then she will be gone to you. Maybe she’ll keep her business. That would be wonderful. Ideal, even.

She notices your short form, staring from halfway behind a tree, and waves one slender hand.

Oh, and her smile is even more beautiful than her eyes, or her face, or even her low and gentle voice.

You raise a hand, and wave back.

You’re pitifully lost on her. She continues on, and you turn back to your basket of prizes and eggs and roots and berries and flowers. It’s time to go home, right. You still need to maintain the dye garden; Kanaya will be by tomorrow for her pinches of purples and blues and reds and yellows. She must have her dyes.

And you must have her visits.

Despite all of your being less than her by painful degrees, you smile to yourself.

You clutch the hand you’d used to wave to your chest.

You pull your hood back over your head, and step out onto the path to head home. There’s a scorched campfire hole on the path, and you sigh. Villagers, needing their hunting. You hadn’t seen them, but you figure they must hunt at night. You wish they would stay out of your forest.

The sonorous and peaceful funerary singing of a few mournful mothers’ wailing rings out over the hills as you turn your back to the sun.

Dew flecks spit from your boots.

It’s so much lovelier than the yapping of the evening hyenas of your childhood.

It begins to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Welcome to my first Rosemary fic! hahaha
> 
> I'm doing my best here, and this is going to be a long one I think. Maybe 25 chapters! if there's anything you'd like to see or if you wanna talk to me or anything, my tumblr is royalrastafariannaynays! Feel free to come and let me know if you need something in particular tagged, and please say anything you like and let me know how im doing! update schedule is unknown right now, but i have most of the fic outlined! hehe
> 
> im also currently in the market for a beta - someone offered and it didnt work out! hit me up if youre interested
> 
> i love you guys and I hope you have a good evening, all of you! <3


	2. Aster

The front door of your little two-room cabin whines as you push it open.

More oil for the hinge soon, then. It’s an old, solid thing, that door. Enchantments are woven into the wood, into the jamb, into the stoop and the baseboard. A very old sprig of dried belladonna sits tied with a stem of hops in a gold ribbon and hangs above the door, for luck and protection.

Dave did that one. With a laugh and a smile in his scarred white eyes.

Various jars and bells are easy to dodge under with your height as you head to the kitchen. Bottles and baubles and pieces of tinted glass jingle into each other. Charms and roots hang on the walls, a few attached to the center pole of the big front room, or tied into ropes and twine and strung across the tops of windows. The ropes were Karkat’s idea ten years ago, smoke pouring from his mouth as he reprimanded you for bad organization. You have to admit they’re a lot easier to change out, this way.

There are also a few small talismans laid about.

One is for better weatherproofing, and one is for rot and lasting, shoved into the crevice of a desiccated roof slat. A small, loose bag is precariously balanced by the hearth for health, and a couple of lavender-wax votive candles are resting on your eating table. There are herbs drying above the fireplace and the washing basin, and so on.

You pull out that one brick from the fireplace, and there you stow your lizard eggs. The queen bee is placed in her jar under a dark cloth above the mantle. The rest of your basket, you set down to be sorted.

Walking over to your door once more, you lock it firmly. You re-set your wards, and breathe a word onto them for their longevity.

And finally, inside, with the light hazing through the clean windows of your cabin, you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s always a task going out. There is so much scrutiny from the people in nearby villages, from the bishops and their lot, from the patrolling watchmen.

Your cloak is draped over the chair you use at the table, and you brush stray stems and dirt from your gown. It’s a long lavender thing, from maybe seventy or so years ago, firm in fabric and always clean. Yes, you have a spell for that. The boots you kick off are worn and old, but you like your dresses to remain in good condition.

It could be called vain, yes. You’re no Christian child, that’s for sure.

The thought is absolutely laughable.

Jaspers, growling plaintively, claws at the door, and you freeze for a second before his familiar scratching places him at the window instead.

With a huff, you reach out to pop the window latch open. Unlike the door, the wards won’t need to be reset on this one. Wards on every entrance is a little overkill, maybe, but you’ve been alive long enough to know that caution shouldn’t be a negligible aspect of your life.

Jaspers leaps clumsily up onto the windowsill, clawing a bit at the stone that makes up your house before managing to scramble inside.

He then leaps to the rug on the floor, and rolls around like none of that ungainly movement even happened.

You allow yourself a few sweet coos, and scratch his big tummy, before closing the window and turning to your tasks.

Tonight, you’ve a goal to clean your cloak. It will be set with the same threads, for longevity. Last night, of course, you couldn’t. Last night was the night for cutting off your hair. Whitened with time as your only marker of age, curled tight and coarse, you keep it as short as possible without being bare.

Moving back over to your basket, you pick it up and carry it to the shelves of jars you have over the counter in your spell-work area. It’s adjacent to the kitchen, and always seems to smell of fire or sage. There are maybe forty jars, here, in various states of fullness. There’s even one, newly full of tight twists, that you just filled last night. Shorn locks are remarkably good for spells as a substitute for blood.

There are no new labels to make, today, and you search for the names before you sort. Even though you know every last odor of every last container by heart.

On these shelves are sections for tea, spells, and food. There’s even that small section for clothing maintenance. You enjoy fashion despite being referred to somewhat unkindly as a “bog witch”. You might be a witch, but you don’t live in some bog. That would be too dirty. And smelly.

Each ingredient goes into its own space, each with its brethren. Each labeled and placed and cork shoved back into the glass mouth.

There is a significant little jar in the kitchen that doesn’t match its cousins on the shelves, though. It’s about ten inches high, tall and narrow, and full of a liquid that almost seems to shimmer on its glassy surface. It’s your own personal – extremely potent – spirits.

It’s something that makes you a fair bit of coin. You sell very precious quantities to a few wanting folks, for a sore tooth or to be mixed with mother’s milk and honey in extremely sparing amounts for a colicky baby. There’s even one drunk who you sell it to, slightly watered down.

It’s the local Count, who has an estate fairly nearby. He sends one of his lads to fetch it.

He thinks you don’t know who it is that’s receiving it.

He has no idea what it is you know.

It’s nothing special, that brew. Just very strong spirits spiced with valerian, and lavender to cover the odor of the valerian.

Very well, you’ll admit that it is imbued with a hint of your own personal magic. It makes the valerian work better, is all.

The sweet lavender caresses your nostrils as you loosen the lid and pop your thumb in for a taste. It swirls on your tongue as you suck the finger into your mouth, and your head takes a second before it subdues itself with a familiar lightness.

You will be the first to confess that maybe taking a hint of this every night to sleep is a bad thing. It’s not that much, but enough to make you take another hint to forget your regret. It’s only as much as you _need_ to feel less intensely as you pull a few strands onto your loom, you tell yourself. The spellweave works better when your magic is less frazzled, you tell yourself.

You can stop anytime, you tell yourself.

Conveniently, the liquor also helps to keep your visions at bay while you sleep.

Maybe some nights it’s worse than others. Maybe if you don’t have to leave the house one day, you would rather spend it stumbling rather than thinking and remembering all of the awfulness from decades past.

You shove the want for more of the alcohol down, and re-cap the bottle. It goes back in its sun-shaded cubby, and you go to lift the queen bee from where you’d set her down.

Quickly, you go out to the hive and place her in. The rain has stopped by now. With a single symbol that you trace on with the charcoal from your waist pouch, you place her in. Almost immediately you see her go to the block of hard candy you’ve wedged into the bottom of the hive, and you hear a few of her hive fly about you before going down to join her.

Soon, more will follow.

Dusting yourself off, grinning at the sight of your summer plan working, you head back indoors.

You pass the nanny goat on your way inside, and check to see if she’s got enough hay and water to last in her shed.

It’s about time to start your own dinner.

Perhaps a nap first?

Yes. A quick nap to soothe your sore feet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_The sleep is fretful. All of the storms and twisters and cold winds in your mind coalesce into running. Just running, trying to beat the ominous darkness that chases you through the golden forest. All around you are thick scorch marks littering both the mossy floor and the lichen of trees. The stench of burning flesh seeks you, but you see no smoke._

_Runes fly up in front of your face, flashing stones and carved symbols on bone. They sail at you through the trees, massive slabs of sun-bleached rabbit pelvis and horse femur. Tiny specks of dirt pelt your face, and you cover it, trying to escape this horrible fog that you can neither see nor hear. But you run._

_You run, and run. You run toward a river, hoping to be lost in its ripples and away. You crash through the underbrush toward the sound of water, choking on the dirt now, choking on the smoke and the fog and the running. Your chest pounds, blazing fire and searing your dry lungs._

_The River is scorched dry when you reach it. A heat rises in your throat, and you want to scream. Stopping in your sprint is hopeless now, and you dive from the green thickets, closing your eyes and waiting for the impact of your head and hands on the rocky bottom._

_Then, suddenly, there’s cool, blessed water._

_No more smoke._

_No more fog._

_No more bad._

_Only the soft soothe of Mother Earth._

_Everything is damp, wet, clear, quiet. There’s some kind of oil on your skin, and you twirl with delight in the waves as you slip through the dregs of the nightmare like a fish. You beat your fins, and the bluster of current rolls down the front of your legs. Swirling, corkscrewing, spiraling through the cold. Surfacing for air just once and then you’re down again, ripping into a fish with your teeth._

_It is beautiful and the evening is sparkling, and your tail whips as you call out to your family and snap at the air. Dave pushes you around in eddies, and you push him back, and his eyes are wet and clear, like marbles in the breeze as he barks._

_More quickly than you can dodge, a fishing spear casts through your ribs._

_The horror returns._

_You’re pulled away from your sisters in the water. Their names are silent cries as you bleed too fast into the stream. Their names are lost as human hands grip your weakening claws, and pull you to the bank. You can still see when those sharp, delicate hands begin to remove your pelt._

_They use scissors made from bone and cut the tendons from the skin._

_And attached to the hands is Miss Maryam._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Jaspers! Get away from there!”

He’s sat himself on top of your chair, and is getting entirely too curious about the pieces of ash flying out of the fire. Hurrying over to shoo him away, you check your stew cooking in the hearth. Good roots, good tasting rabbit.

You hum to yourself, rubbing the last of that eerie nightmare out of your eyes. “And just a touch of Rosemary –“

There’s a knock at the door.

Oh? Who could that be?

Mentally you check off a list. Your wards are set, and your protections are done for the day. Freshly cleaned, your cloak is settled on its hook by the door, boots cleaned of mud and any rocks stuck in the bottom.

The knock comes again, and you sling your washing towel over your shoulder.

Knowing nothing harmful could pass into your house on its own, you freely open the door for the latecomer. Jaspers mewls prettily, and you let him out. He wanders between the legs of Miss Kanaya Maryam, who has come with a basket across her arm and a hood pulled up over her head. The lantern she carries lights up her face most pleasantly.

“Oh?” you ask, full of surprise.

Her laugh is like dawn.

“Hello to you as well, Miss Rose,” she says. Hearing her say your name feels so lovely.

“Why are you here? And so late?” you ask. And it has gotten a little late, evening almost completely set by now.

She gestures, motioning inside, and you cover a laugh.

“Of course, come inside,” you tell her, and proceed to look at her as she ducks into your door, just out of the corner of your eye. “What can I do for you this evening?”

“I ran out of purple, and thought I might as well come by for tomorrow’s order,” she explains, sliding her hood down from her face. As usual, it sends your belly tingling down to your toes. You’re so gone on her it’s nearly a farce unto yourself at this point. And for some human girl, at that. The last girl you were this fond of was most literally a phoenix.

It was a bit of a damper on the relationship when she caught fire and turned into an infant.

You can hear the goat screaming at Kanaya as you close the door. She always does that, strangely. It’s hard to think much of it besides it being a little humorous, at this point. If Kanaya meant any kind of ill, she would not be able to get past the wards. You’re sure of that.

“Were you wanting more than just the one, Miss Kanaya?” you ask her softly, as she chuckles about the goat.

Her blastedly beautiful green eyes peer up at you, then, even as she’s slipping the cloth from atop her basket.

From beneath the fabric she pulls a single pink peony, just starting to open, soft and the yellow pollen gracefully curved. Holding it out to you, she grins slightly. “I found a bush of these in the forest, and thought you might like one.”

You take it gently in your hand.

“Thank you,” you tell her, trying not to stare at it too much.

She seems embarrassed when you glance back at her, turning to lay it on your kitchen counter.

“For spellwork, of course,” she says, rather quickly, and you find yourself smiling a very small smile.

“The usual dyes, then?” you ask, heading over to where you keep the stock of the ones she likes to order.

Kanaya replies positively. “Yes, and the indigo purple specifically, please.” Her eyes linger on the bottle of spirits on the sill. It is a little less full than before your short rest. You choose not to say anything about it, and hope she does not, either. It’s not a habit you’re proud of, despite all of your reasoning.

Of course, she doesn’t obey your unspoken wish.

“So you’re the one supplying that glittery brew to Lord Sturgill?” she asks, and you frown a touch. She must have seen it while visiting and tailoring for his wife.

“Yes,” you reply, and set about leveling little scoops of powder into labeled vials. Kanaya comes closer, setting a small box of used vials onto the countertop, and you know she must be able to smell it on your breath.

In the reflection of one of the bottles, you see her brow quirk. But she turns, and sits. Jaspers immediately jumps to the table to receive head scratches.

You wave her off, and feel the mood shift as you laugh.

You know you could make a talisman if you wanted to, you know you could make a focus object. Plenty of witches have them, and you are a witch. But it would take all those special circumstances, as well as fresh honey that you don’t have yet, and a few ingredients that are harder to come by.

The drink is easier.

Kanaya stands to wait by the door as you place the new vials in her basket, humming a light tune under her breath. And when you’re done, you place it in her hands, and she waits with hands full for you to reopen the door for her.

You do, and she steps out.

“Thank you for getting me what I needed, at such short notice,” she tells you, and drops a single gold piece into your hands. It’s more than enough for what you need, but she always insists upon paying you more for your services.

And you always give the coin a wry smile, and wave her away.

“Thank you for stopping by,” you say, letting yourself be just a little coy. “Your company is always welcome.”

With that, Kanaya smiles, genuine and sparkling. She turns, and leaves.

It makes you want to invite her to stay for dinner.

But you don’t, and she doesn’t, and you close the door once more.

You go to check on your stew.

Jaspers scratches from outside, and you realize you forgot to set your wards again. As you open the door to let him in, you cast your gaze back around for Kanaya. She’s disappeared. You must have been looking at your stew for longer than you thought.

Back inside, you set your wards for maybe the millionth time in your life and go to cut a couple of pieces of bread off of your dinner loaf.

The peony catches your eye. Beautiful, blush pink and full.

Where did she get it, again?

You fill a stone cup from the cupboard with water, and drop the flower in.

It catches the candlelight like skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! dont take this as a regular update schedule, i just felt like posting up day, haha. if things work out ill be working soon and i might not have as much time! 
> 
> as usual i love comments and stuff, and i just started writing some short-fics, hopefully one or two a week, from requests or just me wanting to write them, and they'll be up on my tumblr. check em out! right now i have a sad fic and a very fluffy rosemary first date fic!! soon to be a gen fic and then another davekat fic as well! i hope people enjoy, and please tell me how you feel about either them or my writing here! 
> 
> love you all! <3 <3


	3. White Lilac

Occasionally, you dabble in modern culture.

Some things are forever, and some things tend to change so frequently it’s hard to keep track. Fashion, social habits, slang, those all tend to flutter about like butterflies and get crushed to bits under the invention of the next wheel.

London, mostly, is where their source tends to lie. It changes so quickly.

The latest trend strikes you as odd.

One of the more popular things in the city this year is socializing by telling tales of childhood and one’s past; specifically more daring tales, scandalous lies, or the notion of adventure. Safaris with the father of the family, walks through the woods with the feeling of being watched. Run-ins with wild dogs that chase you down, and undertow in the water that almost captures men and women both, as if slimy hands grasp the ankles of the unfortunate.

It’s only through the butcher that you find this out, and it almost makes you laugh. Don’t parents still teach children the old stories as cautionary tales?

It’s with an amused smile that Maude reaches across the counter, holding out one of your parcels, this one salted meats. “And so they seem to be into these small novels with the most frightening stories! And everyone wants to be in these stories, and everyone wants to read them, according to my sister dear,” she adds onto what she had been saying, reaching down to weigh out the next set on waxed paper.

“Penny dreadfuls, aren’t they called?” you ask, arranging the salted meats in your basket.

“Yes, those. Stories about monsters and so on,” she chatters, taking up most of the conversational space. “Of course, it’s all a load of hogwash. But little Jake seemed to take a liking to the thrill.”

“Is that correct?” you murmur, taking the time to weigh out the right amount of coins for her service. It’s discounted, today, as you’d brought her some of your herbs to trade. She loves the fresh fennel for sausage.

“Yes, yes. Spinning tall tales himself,” Maude adds, wrapping up the last of your purchase. “Only when he sees fit to play, thankfully. But he and that boy down the street, they love their adventures.”

“Quite like his great- grandmother, hm?” you ask her.

She nods, smiling.

She doesn’t know that it’s odd, how long you last here, even with you knowing her parents’ parents.

It’s funny how the magic for their memories work. It’s a powerful enchantment that has to be refreshed once every five years, thereabouts, and it tends to put you out of commission for a whole week. But it’s worth it to not have to pick up and move away from your forest.

The townsfolk don’t question your age, and you don’t perform miracles or the like in front of them. Unquestioned, you are able to walk among them. When they wonder your age, truly, they find themselves confused, and then willfully distracted. You’re a witch to them, but not the truly evil kind. You don’t go too near the church, but your presence in the town is accepted and even needed, at times.

It was a handy spell you picked up after about ten-odd years of living here.

Dave teased you, and told you that you were settling in too early. But you haven’t moved since.

In throwing your cloak back over your front, you reach up to tug on the earring your brother made for you. It’s a heavy and comfortable weight. 

“Well, it would do you excellently to keep them out of trouble,” you advise Maude, and she waves you off.

“They keep to the town and the creek,” she explains with a chuckle. “Never the forest, what with those hunters going missin’.”

You raise an eyebrow. Hunters missing?

That’s odd. Something to check out later. Maybe to ask the Horror about.

Mild pleasantries are exchanged, and you exit the English Butchery with a nod and a promise to return soon enough.

On your way home, you find yourself thinking of your own childhood. What prompts it is the shout of a young voice near the fountain in the square.

Little Jake English, playing at fighting tigers, most likely. His friend Dirk is sitting on the edge of the fountain and playing with the hair of who you assume to be Jake’s baby sister, Jade. Jade, named after the same great-grandmother you had just been speaking of.

Seeing the child, Dirk, is nice. He looks happy and healthy. Well clothed and fed. Good.

Like any other given time, you find your brain piling on layer after layer of memories. You have entirely too many, and they all tend to give you their own amount of grief.

Now, you think of when you were a child, still. A well, for you, instead of a town’s square fountain. Dust everywhere. Palms shifting. The squawk of a rooster.

You recall the smoke filling the air in the gaming hall. Your father there, winning at Dice and chewing on a cigar. His crooked smile, the short gloves to cover the scars on his hands. At that moment, you wished upon him to lose.

From where you hid behind the slotted room divider, you hatefully traced the outline of his face. A potted palm hid your silhouette in the noisy hall, and the alcohol hid the smell of your grime.

Dave was there, holding your upper arm, other hand on the hilt of his knife.

When the owner saw you, he shouted, and your father turned his head, scowl ready.

You spat a curse at him as you left, Dave pulling you from the door. The two of you stole away into the dusty night, taking yourselves to the latest hole in the wall you’d gotten for yourselves. You curled up on a rug seated atop a moldy bed of straw, and you watched Dave as he slept. 

The curse didn’t work. They didn’t always work.

\----------

The Smiths at the top of the main road are standing around their young girl’s bed when you arrive.

The manservant ushers you in, feet quick on the plush carpeting, and boots much softer than your own on the tile of the foyer. There are lights on in several parts of the house, and you know they must have been awake for at least two days now.

Their fourteen-year-old daughter is in her forty-ninth hour of childbirth, they tell you.

Skinny little thing, she is, looking almost desperately up at you as you enter the small bedroom, dragging your bag of effects with you, stomping along from the hallway in a near rage. They waited so long to come and get you. The only doctor in town is away for the end of the week, and this baby is early. It should have been clean, should have come easily to this girl, who is fuller of figure despite her age, especially in the hips.

But no, she’s not.

And it burns in your soul to see her like this.

“What are you all doing, standing around?” you demand, nearly hissing like the viper you are as you place your hand on the girl’s forehead. She’s too warm, sweating and in pain.

No one answers, and you cast your eyes around the room. The mother of this girl looks terrified, sitting at her other bedside. The father and a young man you assume is a younger brother, judging by his resemblance, hover at the door.

You make an annoyed noise, setting your bag down on a chair and opening its clasp at the top. First, for the pain. It’ll make it easier. A little chamomile in a pouch for her, to be brewed into a tea with ginger. And then – and you hate using it, since it’s so horrible, but it’s the most effective and fast acting painkiller you have – a touch of laudanum for the worst of it.

Before you administer the opiate, you glare up at the father and brother.

“One of you, go find some white rags somewhere. Miss Maryam usually has some, she’s across the street and she’ll be awake still,” you order firmly. The brother scrambles.

“And you,” you seethe, standing to your full height. You must be less a third meter than the father, but you feel yourself tower. “You open the windows of the room and fetch me some fresh cold and warm water.”

He nods and turns to do as you say. The mother bristles when you turn on her. Her eyes are fierce, but she is so scared. In every woman, you can see the scared little girl who also could have been married off entirely too young.

“Please make a tea with this,” you tell the missus Smith, and hand her the satchel. “Not too hot, please. She needs that and perhaps some broth.”

The lady of the house does as you ask, and you hear her breath shake as she passes you.

When you find yourself paying attention to the girl again, you can see how difficult this will be. You have no idea if the baby will fare well, or even how well, as you drip the laudanum onto her tongue. As her body relaxes, and her straining feet calm from where they had clenched the sheet, you sigh.

Looking at the bed, there’s blood. Not a lot, but…

She’s too young for this. Too young for the marriage. Her family was failing, and she was married off while she still had a dowry.

As you pull the cloth from her forehead, it’s too hot. Too much strain, not enough air for this little girl. Even as the breeze from the now-open windows caresses her face and clears the room, you think it could go either way. And it’s not in her favor.

But this is your job. They will pay you, the Horror will be more appeased by the life give and take. And you will do your best to see this girl lives.

The father returns with the bowl of cool water, first. You shoo him from the room, and all while murmuring blessings under your breath for her comfort, you clean as much of her skin as you can. She’s relaxed even more, her heaving chest slowing, her face showing a hugely less amount of strain.

And then there’s another contraction. Her whole body seizes, and you just barely have enough time to shove a leather bit in her mouth before she cries out, dressing gown going taut around her knees.

The mother returns with the tea just as you’re rubbing the bruise from the hand the girl had caught. You instruct her on how to administer the tea - pour it from a small bowl into her mouth. The mother says something about the manservant returning soon with the broth, but you’re barely listening.

There’s sweat on your brow, and you drop your cloak and coat to the floor. Tools are removed one by one from your bag. You hope dearly you won’t have to use them, and that relieving the pain and helping to widen the opening will help.

Then, the brother returns with the scraps of fabric.

Immediately you steal one from him, taking the mix of soothing oils from your bag and tossing it down by the girl’s feet. And then that piece of white cotton, wetted cool and laid across her forehead.

“Oh, Kanaya,” the girl says before you muffled around the leather, and.

What?

You follow her gaze, and there she is.

Kanaya Maryam, looking surreal in a tied dressing gown and mussed hair. Her slippers are stained, and she carries more fabric for you. Clean-looking, and in bag shapes, like they had come from a new shipment.

“Hello, dear,” Kanaya murmurs, the most piteous look on her face, and you follow her as she moves around to comfort the girl. The girl breathes a sob as the cool hand touches her cheek. Kanaya is the dressmaker. She must hear her fair share of gossip, and give another fair share of advice.

This girl must have gotten tailoring, and her wedding dress, done by Kanaya. Some comfort to a young bride can go quite a long way.

And as soon as Kanaya murmurs a second time, the girl cries out again. Her body moves, thighs going hard as rocks, and she makes a noise you hadn’t heard before. Perking up, you rush around to the messy end of the bed. There’s blood, yes, but there appears to be no severe or permanent injury. And…

“It’s coming,” you say, filled with surprise.

The father almost trips in the door, and the mother makes a sound of relief as her daughter pushes, crying out yet again. You lean forward, reaching out to help deliver the baby smoothly.

It’s a long process, still, after that, but it happens. The child is healthy, somehow, and safe. A boy, thankfully for this girl. Someone has the common sense to bring you a candle to cut the cord, and Kanaya helps you clean everything up. The mother wants all of the bedding laid in the furnace.

It’s… a wonder, if you saw any.

You had resigned yourself to another hour, at the very least. But then somehow, Kanaya shows up, and it’s alright. Relaxation apparently goes much farther than you thought. Maybe it was the laudanum?

The girl stabilizes quickly, and you say a soft little prayer to the Horror. It’s such a relief that the girl hadn’t been too weak, and died, and that she was one of the few that got with child young and didn’t have to come to you to have it taken from them.

It’s such a relief that you almost forget your fury.

But you don’t. Oh no.

Because where was the father of the new child in all this? Her parents, sure.

But the sire doesn’t even care enough about the girl to stay with her when she needs it?

Kanaya stands by, handing the girl the now-cleaned infant. She doesn’t move when you abruptly storm from the room.

It’s with fire and brimstone in your eyes that you descend the stairs.

And it’s with the might of a woman scorned that you take the father of the new mother by his cravat, and throw him back into the bedroom. The parents look shocked at your anger, and begin to blather about nothing that will make you heel. When you say nothing for several minutes, the room quiets. You could hear a needle drop to the floor.

The father of this newborn will be out, drinking away that dowry he so coveted.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves!” you shriek at the parents of this poor little girl, now obligated to care for a baby. “This girl, just _bleeding_ here! Forced to carry a child at such an age.”

You quiet for a second, huffing to catch your breath. The parents are not cowed. They are not frightened. They raise their voices, but you raise yours as well, and shout over them until they stop. “She would have _**died**_ if I were busy! And thank your almighty stars that I answered the door!”

Now, they look a little guilty.

They say nothing else as you stand over them, pointlessly yelling against a fight you will never win, and have never won. History repeats itself. This is not one of the things that changes, flighty as a swallow.

You turn to the girl.

“If they ever cast you away, you will have a home with me,” you try, as gently as you can without the blood boiling over and out of your veins.

There is a monstrous vexation within you; barely contained, and flying all about the room. Jerkily, you collect your things from your bag as the infant cries, and the new grandmother holds the tiny bowl of tea in her shaking hands.

Without saying another word, you fly from the house like a bat from a belfry.

\----------

You make your next destination the tavern. That’s where he’ll be, celebrating the labor and birth of his child. They always do this, the men of this town, until it’s over. It’s nearly a tradition for them. Meant to be a good luck omen for the labor, but all you see it as is carelessness and laziness.

The gravel from the road kicks up. You hear some of it roll far away as you stomp, and a couple of pieces find their way into your boots.

It’s rainy, and your soles are caked in mud.

A voice comes from behind you, when you trip on a pavestone. Twenty feet from the tavern.

“Is it worth it?” she asks. “To pursue him?”

You stop dead in your tracks.

The real kicker of it is… you know it isn’t. Looking up into the rain, you close your burning eyes, and you clench your fists in rage. From your eyes drip hot tears against the cool moor night, better suited to a destitute and dry evening on the edge of some arid little town in Morocco.

“She was in such pain,” you breathe through your teeth.

Through the delivery, and the travel to get there, and the demands and the orders, there had been a kind of calm. You needed to be steady, to do a good job. But now, you will be left a payment in the morning, and you will be forgotten again until someone needs you. There is nowhere for all of that emotion to go, so it blends in with the falling rain.

Once, you were that girl.

You were far too young.

You were nearly thirteen winters old, and pregnant. The pregnancy failed, and you were nearly killed, beaten until bloodied for the failure.

No one was there for you, but you. And Dave. Dave was there. But he was already blinded, so there wasn’t anything he could do except be the hand servant to your father’s choice for your husband.

“I see them again, and again!” you snap, rounding on Kanaya on that dark street. She remains straight-standing and steadfast. Lips pursed. 

Displeased. 

“Without fail, I see these girls who are in pain and crisis,” you tell her, a bit softer. You must look pitiful. It’s humiliating. “Over the decades and the centuries.”

You feel massively embarrassed as you’re silently stared upon. Kanaya looks at you with head tilted, arms full of unused scraps and eyes thoughtful. It’s awful. After all this time, you haven’t hardened? You’ve never learned?

How pathetic.

That one thought riles you up enough to make you move.

As you huff, and push past Kanaya in the direction of your cottage, she grasps for your wrist. You’ve stopped the tears by now, but you blink one stray back into your eyes. Pausing, heaving breaths, you stare at the slender fingers strapped about your hand. And then, without thinking, you shake the hand off.

It’s…

It’s incredibly difficult, letting go of that hand. The touch feels magnetized to your skin. It’s like a balm on your worry, like a swift kick to the head, and some calming tea, all at once. It’s disorienting, and you thrash your chin to get rid of it.

But eventually, everything becomes unstuck.

You trot away from her, not bothering to put your hood up against the downpour.

You dip into the bottle more than thrice, not able to sleep.

You tell yourself you need it, for this.

The world shifts, grows quiet and calming, like a softly fiddled tune.

Dave’s scolding voice reprimands you from the back of your head. You can remember him, with the drink. So vividly. That look he gives you all the time, like he was just there. 

Maybe you shall visit him soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry for the long wait! here's another chapter, hot and ready! 
> 
> i have a few more already written after this but im going to try to finish two more in my outline before posting the next one! work is kicking my ass, rofl. hope everyone is enjoying the story! it's rated M for heavy topics and violence, basically, so i hope that didnt catch anyone off guard. love yall! <3


	4. Sunflower

Staying out in that rain was… a little regrettable.

It wasn’t just that girl you’d been to see. There was a young boy caught abed with a spiritual illness the day after, and then after that you cast a Sight and found that the bones were telling you to cover your garden. You were out all day to tend the garden and make sure none of your drains were blocked, and by then your cloak was decidedly soaked through.

It’s still raining outside, and you’ve had to shoo more than one or two frogs away from your front porch.

More than that paltry amount of activity would surely make you feel weak. You creak a little from your mouth as you blow your nose a second time. Just a touch of stuffy nose and sore throat, is all. And at least your garden will be safe and your spells stable.

Outside, the nanny goat is fine, restless shut into her small barn but not much else.

Of course you milked her this morning, you have to or else she’ll be pained. You drank half of it yourself today after a quick filtering, and then the rest went into the ice cellar you have, down around the side of your house.

The sound of the rain is wonderful and soothing on the roof. It plunks gently into your fresh barrel by the door, it spatters on the ground, and it flicks off of the leaves of the trees. The forest, maybe a hundred meters away from you, quietly bristles with the occasional wind.

The fire in front of you is warming and gracious, even as you sneeze for the third time in so many minutes. Jaspers’ purring increases for half of another minute, calming you back into the warm cup in your hands. Suddenly you’re very happy that you decided to feed that little kitten, all those years ago.

As all sickness tends to, this one has brought you a touch of fever. It’s not enough to make you quake and ache, but it is enough to make you feel even more tired.

It’s seasonal, and it will pass. It is temporary. No witch you’ve heard of has died of a mere household illness, not like the poorest villagers and townsfolk would. Not like they used to, anyway. Medicine is coming farther every day.

Maybe if you were an elderly woman, or an infant. Maybe if you had the consumption, or were cursed.

Maybe then you would die from this.

You tilt your head, and watch the flames before you.

Their heat washes over your face, drying the air around you and making moving pictures on your eyelids. What a lovely fire.

You’d gone by the apothecary for a special herb to lessen the fever earlier in the day. Somehow, the poultice you crafted from it just made you feel worse. It was odd. But you were sure it was the right one. Maybe it was just expired. That apothecary. She’s newer to the village, maybe a few months. Years? Dark hair, a sweet smile. Like a lily in her countenance. Surely it wasn’t her intent.

_Knock, knock._

Hm?

You blink a few times, waking yourself from the doze.

Jaspers is looking over at the door, also, tail swooshing behind him.

He mews at you.

The knocks come again. This time, three of them.

With a gentle nudge of your fingers, you rid your lap of the warm cat. You regret it almost immediately, as it invites some of the humid air back into your space, and a kind of chill that can only be explained by fever.

And to the door you go.

The knocks come a third time, this time only two knocks again, before you get over to answer them.

When you open the door, Kanaya Maryam is standing there.

“I apologize for calling unannounced, but I felt a tad remiss with the interaction we had just two days ago,” she says, so soft. And you’re so weak when you’re sick, your body is telling you to depend on another human, another person at least. But you can’t. How sad.

Her arms beneath her fine cloak are full of a small basket, and then an armful of flowers. Oh, what kind are these?

The swirling and… strangely familiar design on the hem catches your eye as she moves. That is, before the attention is rightfully glued back to her lovely, lovely eyes.

In her eyes is a look that bridges concern with something deeper, more intense. It’s something you’re hoping is friendship, or else you don’t want to think about it. But it’s so piercing, and you don’t even want to look at it. Like a soul connection, like painful eye contact cushioned in kitten’s paws. So real.

And you sway on your socked feet, and feel your eyes shift out of focus a tad, and then it’s all concern from the end of the woman on your doorstep. Jasper meows at her, and rubs his face against the doorframe. He doesn’t want to go out in the rain.

Kanaya comes in as you back up, inviting her in.

“Can I make you some tea?” you offer, heading over to the teapot you’ve been siphoning all day. When you look at her, she shakes her head, and lays her prize down atop the table. Prizes, actually. Both the flowers and the basket. Upon closer inspection, you see that the flowers are not multiple stems, but one.

A single, full branch of bright yellow gorse. The thorns around the base have already been shorn, and so it rests with its black thorns and thick leaves, smelling sweetly of vanilla and the barest hint of coconut. Oh, lovely. You’ve always admired the gorse flowers.

“You’ll need to stop bringing me flowers, Miss Maryam, the townsfolk will think I have a suitor,” you joke, and she laughs with you. There’s a tinge to her laughter, however, and you look up. The illness is making you daring, making you want to pursue everything. Damn this fever.

But Miss Maryam is looking away, instead. Her hands are shifting in the basket she’s now removed from beneath her cloak. From within comes a spicy scent. Something flavorful, and… almost like tea. Is it tea?

She turns to you, and holds out a small box.

“You’re ill,” she begins, and you nod. The box is wooden, and carved. “Please take some of this tea. It’s excellent for sickness.”

You find yourself laughing a little, and setting the box down back in front of her before hugging your blanket closer to yourself. “I may be ill, but I am also a witch,” you tell her. And she frowns.

“Just try it, please?” she says, and you close your mouth. The sudden command makes your feathers stand on end on your neck. “Just try it, and consider it a gift.” Her lips purse, like she’s trying to not tell you something. That’s a bit odd.

“I’m glad I had it on me, I was making a delivery,” she mutters, closing her basket back up, and hooking it under her cloak once more. “I’ll just have to go back by home and get more.”

You open your mouth again, to protest. You reach out an arm, start to tell her something about you being able to heal yourself just fine. But then, before you can speak again, she holds up one defiant hand with a finger pressed to your lips. It silences any and all thoughts you’d thought to have.

The place where she touches your skin tingles, and you’re shaken. How many people have silenced you thus? It doesn’t happen often, does it? Not nearly enough, with the way you carry on.

“Return the box to me when you’ve finished it,” she says, then. And turns on her toe to leave your cottage.

Jaspers makes a curious noise by your ankles, and hops up on the table to inspect the box. Eating the flowers is apparently his first order of business, but he receives a thorn to the nose in return. He hisses at them.

The rain sounds come back to you.

What a quick exchange that was. Kanaya comes in, gives you gifts, and then practically spirits away back into the deluge. You suppose you’ll be expected to finish the tea, now. The scent of it is still spicy to your nose, drifting pleasantly up from the box. It’s a strong blend. And it smells… vaguely of something ethereal.

When you lay a dowsing rod by the box, it picks up nothing. No poison, no ill intent- Nothing that will make you sick, you think. The silly little voice in the back of your head tells you to try it. The Horror wouldn’t steer you wrong. Not needing your vessel for the contract you’d made, anyway.

So you shrug, and set a pot of tea to boil.

It fills the room with that same pleasant spicy scent. The air that reeked of wet earth now smells lovely and warm. When the water sets, and the tea is ready to drink, you pour yourself a small cup.

Just inhaling over the cup makes you feel… something. It makes your body feel somewhat stronger, somehow.

Though more drowsy, as well.

It’s not a bad combination.

A bigger cup is poured, and you sink back into your chair. Jaspers finds his place on your lap again. And you drink. It feels like heaven on your throat, like honey and mint. Oh, gods. You hadn’t even added any honey, though. The spoon for stirring was normal, there weren’t any special runes. And the tea wasn’t anything… special, it seemed.

So it seemed.

You fall asleep there in that chair.

 

* * *

 

The next day, you wake in bed, feeling much improved.

The fever is gone, your nose is only minorly stuffy, and of all, you feel stronger. Your body aches, still, but it doesn’t feel tired. The rain is still going, and the smell of that tea from the day before lingers. You attribute it to being a new scent to your nose, a break in the regular miasma of things you have in the air.

Despite the rain still coming strong, the day feels a little brighter. That’s the lack of illness speaking, definitely. You put on your boots and some fresh clothing, planning on washing some this afternoon, before slinging your dry cloak over your shoulders and stomping out in the muck to milk the goat.

 

* * *

 

You’re just picking the leftover chunks of soap from beneath your nails, and the sun is shining, when you hear a familiar knock on the door. The downpour ended just before lunch, and you’re on your second cup of that amazing tea. The sniffling is entirely gone by now, and you’re a whole half of the way through the small box.

Kanaya has just a dress on when you open the door, hair tacked up into its familiar chignon and a few curls springing out with the humidity.

Lovely as ever. And even more, since you can see the curve of her neck in her gown.

“Hello,” you tell her, and gesture for her to come in. “Lucky for you, I just finished the wash. I was a bit behind in that.”

Kanaya nods, smiling. She stands close to you as you bend over the sink, pumping the spigot to get some water flowing to you. “I take it you’re feeling better?” she asks, and you nod. You’re feeling much better. Spry, even. It’s uncharacteristic for you, but it does happen occasionally. Sometimes you just feel like you’ve had good days.

“You would be correct,” you tell her, and wipe your hands on a rag before turning to her. “So, what did I do to deserve the honor of your company?”

It’s an odd expression that takes over her mouth before she straightens it, adjusting the basket on her arm uncomfortably.

“I came to get the jar of honey I left with you yesterday,” she says.

She’s not meeting your eyes, and you cock your chin. “You didn’t leave any honey with me,” you tell her, and she still doesn’t look at you. What does happen is that a pink blush blooms across her nose. It’s magnificent. But of course she must be embarrassed about something, she’s just a girl from town. Your affections wouldn’t be returned by her, so you don’t even consider those options. She lied. Why? What was she trying to cover up?

“Did you come to make sure I was drinking the tea,” you ask, probing, “Like you demanded I do?”

And like that, her face goes through a bout of indecision, and then creases with relief.

“Of course,” she tells you, meeting your eyes briefly before turning from you.

It makes you chuckle, and take a deep breath before sitting at your table.

“It’s a wonderful brew,” you say, taking the attention from her fib. “Where did you get it?”

Kanaya visibly relaxes, sitting down a mere foot from you, on the table’s bench. “It’s from the far southeast,” she says, “I don’t normally have much, but a shipment just came in.”

You’re not sure what to ask after that. The doe bleats out in her pen, and you hear Jaspers make a high noise as he pounces on something outside. A mouse, most likely. Kanaya is already looking at you when you turn your eyes her way.

That same intense feeling from before immediately forms between the two of you. In the back of your mind, you’re confused. It’s only hope, right? Only hope that’s making you imagine that she’s making the same eyes right back at you that you make at her nearly every time her back is turned.

Maybe it’s just the remaining fever that makes you imagine this. The fever allowed you to have it, for a short time. Though you’re sure that was just imagination. Why would it be anything better than that? Why would you lose your composure twice in two days?

All of a sudden, it feels like too much. Too much, too soon, and you look away. Deny it.

Deny it all.

Kanaya stands up, makes for the door, and you stand with her.

When you meet her eyes, this time, there’s just the same kind smile she always wears.

“Bring the box back when you finish it, please,” she says. “And any extra dyes, if you have them.”

You smile politely back at her, reassure her that you will, and she’s off down the road again. Hem somehow not muddy, swirls of lost locks of black hair tangling in the wind against the blue sky.

 

* * *

 

You continue to drink the tea for a few days after that. It worked so effectively. Why should you risk it, and not keep taking it as your illness wanes? It makes you feel almost energetic, and you get quite a bit done in the next few days.

But one night, it stops.

Every now and then, you’ll have a great few days that will come to their close when something happens to end the streak. There’s always something. And besides, you’re almost out of tea.

This time, when you burst, gasping, from sleep, it’s from a nightmare.

It takes you a good length of a moment to pull yourself together, and stop feverishly darting your eyes this way and that. You remember where you are just as Jaspers scampers into the room to check on you.

The imagery of the first night on the ship is vivid.

 

 

_The both of them, just turned thirteen not four months past. Rose, still weak from her miscarriage the week before, but desperate to get out, to leave their father behind. That night, the waves had sloshed and tumbled all in their little makeshift stow away corner. It almost washed away the bloody marks on the walls that Rose had placed to keep them hidden. It was violent, and their little cranny smelled like brine and Dave’s sick._

 

 

Sleep doesn’t come back to you that night.

But as you’re reaching for the bottle of liquor, to dull your senses and muffle the pain of knowing…

You take the last bit from that box of tea, instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope yall enjoyed this little aside  
> love you, talk soon


	5. Bells of Ireland

Jaspers is huddled in your arms like a muff.

He nestles up against the pulsating magic of the Horror within you.

She’s been restless lately. The forest has been whispering – much greater whispers than are usual. The earth feels electric on the ley lines, and even the drops of rain are murmuring at you. It’s only there if you focus, but.

They speak softly to you in each of your daily scrying sessions. They curl their incantations around your ears and lick up the shell of your nose, opening their mouths for you to see their lips move until they become hoarse.

It’s… different. The last time this happened, a freak snowstorm almost starved the village, and almost every one of the remaining elderly died. Children starved, but wild animals certainly did not as they devoured half of the village’s sheep. That was nearly a hundred years ago. Not even the people entirely remember it.

Today, you are walking for the coast, the closest of which is a mere two miles away.

The sea is nearly jubilant with her wind and waves today as she roars and crashes herself against the cliff rocks below. Jaspers leaps from the warmth of your arms to stand upon the scrying stone. A wave casts a round shell up onto the cliff, and you sigh. Of course, she wants her sacrifice.

The sea is the easiest sacrifice, of all of the powers you ask favors from. A sharp breeze smacks you in the face, twisting in your short hair and doing cartwheels in your dress as you remove your dagger from its sheath.

A simple cut into the inside of your arm does it for you, for now. You pick up the round shell, and hold it beneath your arm to squeeze blood into its coil. The shell fills easily, and for a moment the wind is still as you toss it back. Your throwing arm isn’t as bad as it could be.

The Horror curls in a mild fit of jealousy that you’re paying homage to something besides her forest. It soothes easily, as you hold out your arm, and allow a bit of life to drip from your veins. For a second, she withdraws from some of your more permanent spells. Before you, your knuckles become gnarled, and the flow of red increases incrementally. And then it stops, and you breathe a sigh of relief as elasticity returns to your veins.

She approves the tryst with the sea.

Her majesty, goddess of the ocean, takes the shell as it shatters on the rocks. Your sacrifice is met with acceptance as the wind lessens for but a moment. Enough to cast your runes.

“Now,” you say, moving back to stand before the basin. “Tell me what I must know.”

Jaspers mewls, rubbing his face against your chin. You reach into your pocket for the pouch where you keep your runes, and from there you draw the set of polished bones you only use for this. The bones of a creature of both land and sea. You don’t remember what it was, at this point.

The seven rectangular pieces are burned with runes into both sides, deep and lasting. Yanking two pieces of hair from your temple is the last step, and then juggling it all in your hands, you drop the lot into the basin before you.

The energy of the spell shouldn’t take as much out of you, with your hair being provided as a medium. But you feel a spark leave you and transfer into the bones, and down into the earth. You wince, and you feel the Horror crawl into the empty space left behind. She patches it slowly with a tad of her own, and takes the clotting of the blood on your arm as payment.

Again, the process, not the blood itself.

More importantly than the Horror, however, you stare at your reading.

Complete neutrality.

All of them are flipped to blank. Every single one.

So the sea doesn’t know? It makes you uneasy. The sea knows most things. What could be wrong here?

_On the sea, young Dave was blind once more. The shifting ley lines in the ocean and the noise of the water and the creaking of the ship lost him whatever his magic had gained for him sight-wise. The coals your father had thrown across Dave’s face had stolen his sight, not his magic._

_But out there, the ocean tried to take it all. The sea tried to take your lives. It gave you thirst, hunger beyond recognition when stealing from the crew was too dangerous; it gave you sunburns and sweat and freezing cold. It stole one of the sacks of your belongings, and you had to wear Dave’s clothes for a time. It stole so much, but it promised a new life if you could steal away from the deck in Great Britain._

_And then it gave you a witch, one who had watched the tides and listened to the shells and touched the battered sea-glass. It gave you to the witch as well, the witch who had given the sea a just sacrifice before stealing the children away into her care._

But even now, you can only remember the horrific storm. The teetering point of life and death, stowed away beneath the deck, at danger of being thrown overboard by crew, or worse, returned to your father.

Jaspers paws at you.

You were lost in thought. How silly. You sweep the runes back into your hand, into the pocket, and leave the hair. Jaspers climbs back into your arms for the return to your cottage.

 

* * *

 

Kanaya is waiting for you when you round the front of your house.

Today she wears white, from wrist to chin, smothered with ruffles and a work smock over it all.

She’s staring at nothing, ignoring the fading bleating of the goat, and smiling. The sky is open today. Sunny and bright, making everything it touches green and light. A dry day, but not warm. Clouds pass overhead, shadowing sections of the moor and making a web of lighted walkways.

The woman you can’t take your eyes off of looks ethereal in the sunlight. Her skin seems to almost glow. It’s as if the rays are passing right through her. Blinking twice, you don’t see it anymore, and play it off as a trick of the light. Because for a moment, you could have sworn her ears were tipped in pointed gold. When she exhales, you can imagine a dusting of fine wax-flower petals. And when she shifts her feet, it’s like a curtain of sallow branches moves aside.

When she turns to you, and smiles, that all goes away. Your imagination. How tricky.

You smile widely as well, forgetting for a moment your upset and confusion over the reading you’d received. She waits there, and you walk up to her, and she has another flower for you; just one, this time. She also has another parcel for you, something wrapped in brown paper.

The single flower is dainty in your hand. It’s… a violet. A single, purple violet.

Your face fills with a rosiness, for surely she _can’t_ know what this one means. Her face is clear, not overtaken by the merest blush or even a hint of one. So you assume she has no idea. Being inclined the way you are, you know very well.

“I’ve brought you more tea,” she says, once you’ve both stood around awkwardly for what has apparently been deemed an appropriate amount of time. “As well as the bloom.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” you say, letting Jaspers drop gently from your arms.

“Think of it as an addendum to paying me back,” she replies with a smile.

“Well I’m not even sick anymore,” you insist, not taking the package she holds out to you. “It hardly makes sense to drink tea for wellness if I’ve not caught ill.”

Kanaya presses it into your hands. “Just take it, okay? For another time,” she says, genuinely smiling. “I myself drink a cup of it every day. It’s good for your skin and teeth, too, or so my mother used to say.” And you can see in her eyes that she’s earnest and honest, that she just wants you to be well. It strikes a chord within you that you aren’t sure how to handle. It’s an uncomfortable pinch, and it tightens when you take the package from her fingers.

But when you see how relieved she is that you’ve taken it without any more protesting, that twinge goes away with the breeze.

Kanaya backs up before you can refuse any more presents, and turns on her toe to walk away down your front path.

 

* * *

 

Putting the flower away isn’t all you have to do today. There’s someone in the village you must check on, and then you need to weed the garden again. A few new sprouts shot up seemingly overnight, most likely due to the sun, and you’ll have to get it taken care of before their roots get too far.

For now, you set the bloom in water, put the new stash of tea in the same box you were initially given, and put on your nicer cloak for town. Door is locked, Jaspers is patted goodbye on the top of his head, and you’re back on your way.

Of course, by the time you depart, Kanaya is nowhere to be seen. Which is good, lest you have to make another awkward trek alongside her to the town proper.

All thoughts of the object of your affection are lost when you spy a dead kit lain across a stone on the edge of the road. When you make your way over to it and crouch down, just ten feet off the path, you see not just the one, but a whole nest of bunnies, cold in the base of a tree.

A quick look at them shows that it’s starvation.

But they’re not near old enough to need their mother getting their food for them. Almost grown, they are, with full coats and whiskers. Looking around, you see a full bush of berries just next to the nest, and the grass around them is covered in edible weeds and small wildflowers.

What happened?

Your unease is set ablaze, now, spreading through your mind again and erasing the moment of reprieve you’d had this afternoon. Hitching your skirts up, you pace to the road and then make your way quickly the rest of the way into town.

There are omens. Bad omens. Occasionally you’ll have a moment of panic like this, and you must see it through. You have to check on him, to know that he’s okay.

Once you get to town, you try to slow your pace, to look down the streets and things, surveying but not attracting attention. Quite a few people are out today, with the weather being as good as it is. And Jake and his baby sister are sitting on the bench in front of the butchery.

But you don’t see him. There’s a niggling worry in the back of your mind, like a rat has found a hole and is chewing it open, bit by bit. Like a grub worm is burrowing into your ears, like nothing is letting you forget. You’ve gotten this far, and you’ve gone longer without seeing him. So why does it bother you so much right now?

It’s a good family, with money and its own private doctor, which adopted him. Things will be fine.

Things _must_ be fine.

Not seeing him anywhere in the town, you retreat to the butcher.

Calming yourself with a few breaths, and plastering a kind smile to your face, you crouch down before little Jake. He looks at you and his eyes light up. Good, he remembers you. His little sister, Jade, reaches out to touch one of your rings.

“Hello young man,” you start, and he nods. Good. “Could you tell me where the young mister Dirk is on this beautiful afternoon?”

At this, Jake frowns and crosses his arms. “He’s in lessons, Miss,” he grumbles, and.

Ah. So you were worried for nothing.

All of the tension and fear leaves you, and you sigh.

“Is that so?” you ask Jake, and he nods, looking glum.

“Well then, I guess you’ll have to play with this alone,” you say. And when you whisper a word and focus on your elation and relief, a penny in your palm turns into a miniature paper bird.

Jake claps his hands and Jade squeals with glee, and they run inside to show their mother. Maude waves to you as you pass the open door, and you wave back, and leave the town.

The uneasiness at the omens doesn’t stop, however. But then, those omens never do.

Beating in your stomach like a thousand moths.

 

* * *

 

And that night, you have a dream.

You’re caught in a funnel of web, sticky and sweet, clinging to every piece of clothing.

Your velvet wings beat against the captivity, your antennae threaten breaking from your crown, and you feel so exposed, so caught, so helpless to do much else but struggle.

Fingers curl around your short locks, slender and beautiful and pitch, pitch black. A single curl springs from her own tightly wound hair as the spider descends upon you. Pincers bare and dripping with venom, web shaking as she plucks her way down the gossamer threads.

Muffled by your own tongue, you make a noise of struggle, of complaint. Her mouth stretches as she coos right back, and Kanaya bends to frame your lips with her own.

You daren’t hope it – the barest of touches, the most fair of kisses on your mouth. It makes you thirsty for more, dragging in breath after panicked breath and feeling both dread and desire. Panicked, you’re conflicted. She is here to devour you, the butterfly caught in her trap.

Two of her hands twist in your hair now, clawing her nails so gently against your scalp. And all ten of her fingers mark lines you will feel forever on your skin. The wrists turn, slowly, abruptly, firmly. It doesn’t hurt, but you know what she wants.

Trying to resist does absolutely nothing, and your virulent gasps seem to paint the air with fog as your head tips back. Those lips that once sat on your mouth cup the front of the arch of your throat. And it feels like choking, feels like doom, feels like you willingly came here to be ensnared by the beast.

Her pincers graze your skin like a promise to feed, hungrily, until you wail in despair and can give no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone liked the chapter :) posted it a bit later than i was wanting to but work has been hectic! 
> 
> btw: the color of violet i specified stands for "love between women" and of course rose takes it as gay as possible because shes so THIRSTY
> 
> i love you all and i hope youredoing well <3


	6. Eglantine Rose

_”You know you don’t have to settle into this town for me, right?”_

The memory comes unbidden as you move the bottle of spirits from where it’s been collecting dust.

A shaft of daisy-yellow sunlight shines through it. This is the last of the bottle. Half of it is full, and you’ll be going into town to sell it today. The Lord Sturgill said he would meet you at the apothecary for it, in his letter. There was less uproar on his part than you expected, when you said you were to stop making the brew in drink-able quantities.

He’d actually seemed happy for you, in a way.

The white cloth sack fits the bottle just right, squat as it is, and you light a match to finish off the wax seal just enough before gently tying the drawstrings.

_”I’m not settling in for you. Don’t grow your head too big, now, dearest brother.”_

The sunlight is softer than blooming flowers as you straighten. Your cloak is heavy on your shoulders, and you hope that winter won’t come too early this year. Your winter garb isn’t close to done yet. You’ll need to make a new hood, since your last one is getting old enough to smell like must, even washed. You should be able to get them from the harvest ritual you’re planning. Usually, you don’t need to. This year, you’re taking precautions.

You’ll be making a better shield. A cocoon against the frigid temperatures, padded with softened wool and the fur of the rabbits you’ve been skinning. It will hold you and keep you safe until the spring.

Something still doesn’t feel right about this coming winter.

The door thuds as you close it behind you.

Summer is drawing to a close. The whispers of the forest have remained the same for months. Talking, murmuring. Cooing neither threats nor sweet nothings.

You’ve been lasting off of one cup of that magnificent tea a day, for more than two moon cycles. The sweet liquor you brew has long since lost its allure. Somehow, through this tea, you’ve stopped needing it. Your magic feels restless, but no longer out of control.

You do not feel the need to dwell quite as heavily on those dead and gone.

Well. It also helps that on the full moon after you fell ill, you made a focus object. It’s annoying to carry with you, in its heavy pouch on your neck, and you’ll need to make a more powerful one on the solstice. But the bundle of shed cat claws and silk and seven smooth stones was a good investment of your time. With it, you stopped seeing the terrible future in your dreams, stopped feeling static on your fingertips. It will last very well until… well, until either Jaspers dies, or you get that solstice ritual with Karkat done.

Jaspers is tied to your magic the same as your magic is partially tethered to him. He will not be able to leave you. But he’s comfortable. It’s a good life for him, if he stays here.

An oddly warm wind blows across the moor as you walk the path down the center.

_”Hey!” Dave calls out to you, slinging an arm over Karkat’s broad shoulders. “My head is perfectly normal in size!”_

_He laughs, and Karkat shoves him off. You have your skirts tied up by your waist, and the other two are dragging over stones for the walls of your new home. They will last a long time,currently a paler grey, destined to darken and collect moss with time._

_Karkat pulls his head around and kisses him. Dave yelps, dropping the stone he’s lugging and narrowly missing his feet._

_Dave swears to the moon, kissing him back before picking his rock back up and trudging over to the house, and his paramour bursts out another laugh, crackly with smoke even in his human form._

_They are both looking a tad darker than usual, and Dave’s hair is sporting a misting of lighter brown. So they were in the desert, then, when you Sent for them? Wasn’t Karkat hatched in the desert? Somewhere to the east of where you and Dave were born, some several centuries past. Gobi rings a bell, in your mind. A name._

_You scratch your own black-haired scalp, taking a second to breathe before resuming your tasks. Karkat had a formula for specific concrete, made with salt water, that he said came from a recipe book he’d inherited from his father’s hoard. It was being slathered between stones, smoothed only on the inside of the house. Karkat made the ice cellar, you outlined the cottage, and Dave didn’t do much else but bother everyone trying to work. And match up smooth stones for the floor. He did that._

_“Can you two stop being affectionate and build my house?” you ask, and they both groan at you in tandem._

_Dave is so happy, now. Despite the few gray hairs that have popped up prematurely on his head._

_He’s wiry and strong with his traveling with Karkat. They work odd jobs to get food and money, stay in caves, explore ancient tombs and learn bits and pieces of languages. Even languages lost._

_Dave’s blind eyes glimmer in the rare sunlight. It’s raining most of the time, here, which you like. Dave thrives off of movement, the sun, and the growth of green things in the most desolate of places. He’s told you about tigers, about libraries so old the books can’t even be touched, or they crumble in your hands. His magic has also grown stronger, with Karkat. He can ‘see’ better, now, than he could as a child._

_Karkat hops over, gives him one last peck on the forehead, and then with a burst of scales and wings, he’s gone, to get more flat stones, you hope._

_Dave listens him go, with awe and love lighting his smile._

_He’s gotten laugh lines already, with how much happiness finds him these days._

_You’re so glad they found each other, that one busy day in Edinburgh._

A child crashing into your knees stops you in your memories as you walk blithely away from your stop at the apothecary. Aradia took your delivery for the Lord and Lady Sturgill, gave you a payment, and waved you on your way. Surely she’ll charge him more for it than you would, but it’s no matter. Not to you, anymore.

Jake apologizes loudly as he continues running, dodging around you. He’s just come out of Kanaya’s shop. What was he in there for?

Kanaya steps off of her stoop, waving at you to come closer.

You oblige, a bit of a grin on your lips as you fondly regard your previous memories.

“I was thinking of coming by and seeing you,” you say, before she has the chance to speak. “I had a spare afternoon and thought we might sit down for tea?”

It’s honest, even if it wasn’t in your thoughts today, yet. It would have been when you arrived home, and you would have rued the moment you allowed yourself to forget her.

Remembering Dave and Karkat, together, and so happy – it’s made you a bit sentimental. Kanaya’s smile warms your chest as she laughs behind her hand, and gives you some story or another. You don’t pay a whole great deal of attention.

Not to anything but her eyes, at least. Her eyes, which sparkle as she regales you with the short tale of young Jake English, who burst in before his mother and demanded Kanaya make him a proper adventuring cloak. Of course, according to Kanaya, Maude had been mortified. But Kanaya had agreed, and Jake had lit up, letting her get his height and ask him what color he would like.

Maude asked only that it be made with arm holes, and warmly, so that he might wear it more regularly when cold struck. Kanaya claims she refused payment as she gestures for you to follow her inside.

“I haven’t made one before, not a full length cloak for one so young,” she says, as you set your things down on her front desk table. “It’s going to be a good learning experience for me. And I have spare material.”

“That’s good,” you tell her.

While you’re in the shop, you look around.

Kanaya sets about pulling a kettle from a small fire you see near the front. Archaic, since most would have used a stove. But you like the look of the water collecting condensation as it hangs above the flames. And the steam that shoots from its spout when it’s warm enough.

While she’s pouring a measure of tea into the pot to steep, you examine her little shelves.

Here she has a small area for providing refreshment specifically, apparently. There are breads, a few biscuits, some summer sausage. A few candies, and. Oh. All of the tea.

There’s a good three by three feet of the wall taken up by tea storage. A wooden cabinet, with maybe thirty-one little latching drawers in it. Each has its own little label, and some of them you recognize as herbs. One drawer takes up the space of six of the smaller ones.

“Oh, you’ve found it,” Kanaya says.

You turn to her. “Come again?”

“The undeniably embarrassing amount of tea I possess,” she explains. And yes, it is quite a lot.

But her visible embarrassment is what gets you to smile. She stands, hands folded and wringing, eyes cast at the floor. And, strangely, an unsure smile tugging at her mouth with its dark rouge and its fullness. And a blush.

You’re very sentimental today, hmm?

“I’m sure you come up with the most delicious blends,” you tell her, trying to assuage her nerves.

It works, and she looks so relieved even you feel yourself hold less tension.

“Yes, like the brew I give to you,” she says.

And then her eyes widen, and her blush intensifies.

And you have a dawning realization.

You feel a childish glee come to you. “So it’s a blend then!”

Kanaya purses her mouth, frowning at herself and walking over to you.

“It’s a blend! You must tell me what’s in it,” you say, pointing a single finger at her.

“It’s just a blend of a few things, and one ingredient that comes from somewhere far away,” she replies, indignant. Her face tries to frown, like she wants to scold you, but you catch her biting back a smile as she opens the biggest drawer to remove two delicate teacups, and two saucers, from their holders.

“It made me feel too good to just be tea,” you say, finger still pointing at her. And as she turns, facing you, she reaches out a finger of her own.

“If you trust me enough to drink my recipe,” she says, “Then you should also trust me enough to let me keep this secret.”

And then, like you were a child, she presses the tip of her finger into the ball of your nose. 

“Do you spend so much time thinking of me?” she asks.

And it’s your turn to bluster and fluster and turn red as the evening sky.

“Why I never – “ you start, and then cut off when she gives you a knowing look before going back to the table.

“Don’t distract me like that,” you tell her, and she laughs.

You laugh, as well, and follow her to the table.

…

On the table, sits your basket. Inside is a charm, just a sachet for protection and guidance during the night. It’s a bundle with birch and ivy. The connotations of some of the ingredients, those of love, are not lost on you. You don’t know why you decided bring the charm today.

“What did you do before you came to this town?” you find yourself asking, to make idle chatter fill the air. Maybe to make her speak again. You never tire of her voice.

Did you pick the thing up on your way out of the door? 

“I tried to be a nun,” Kanaya hums. That’s interesting. “I found the church was not for me.”

Did you think you might sell it to someone else?

“Oh? And what of your family?” you ask, thinking nothing of the inquiry.

Kanaya makes a stony face at your question, and looks at you over her shoulder. It’s a sideways look, a stern look, both a warning and a wall. No more questions about her relatives then.

“I haven’t got any family to speak of,” she says, then.

And. Oh.

Looking for anything to turn your mind, and ignoring the flip of joy in your stomach at knowing that this way she’ll be less attractive to suitors that might take her away (not all parts of you are good), you return your thoughts to the little bag in your basket.

Out of the blue, despite not knowing why you snatched it from your house, the timing feels right. 

You want to protect her, from the world.

This young lady with her sweet countenance and her soft voice. She should be protected from suitors that are wrong for her, and men who would want to steal from her. Everyone but you, she needs protection from.

That one bare thought casts a thread of revulsion into your tapestry. You don’t own her, though. But… she still must be protected. From the evil. From the forest. Even from yourself, were you a tad more grim in character. It’s not just an excuse, anymore. That reason is more solid.

And it’s not like you’re forcing her to put it above her door.

Kanaya slides a box onto the table, and you know before she opens it that it’s the same tea as always. Where she pulled it from, you don’t know. She will insist that you take it free of charge, generous as she is. And you will protest, and she will wave you off. As the only tailor in town, she is not hungering for material wealth. Especially with the summer ending.

But you hate receiving gifts. Especially for things you did not earn.

So, before she can open her mouth to say that you should take some with you, since it’s helped you so much, you grip the sachet tight in your fingers.

Giving her this would not be untoward, either. As one of your best customers, with her purchasing dyes once a month, it would just be a favor. A protection charm for her. Guarding your assets.

The weave of the drawstring is coarse against the tip of your thumb, and the faded, thin leather of the bag is soft on your palm. The herbs shift within as you raise it up, holding it out before you can change your mind.

The room is silent for but a moment as you stare at her, and she stands there with fingers just barely prying open the mystery box of tea. And then her gape grows into a small smile once more. It’s laced with apprehension and… some kind of doubt? But it’s a smile nonetheless.

“What’s this?” she asks.

You try to be smooth, try to be calm about your gift.

Your heart pounds and her smile carves its way into the confines of your heart. It’s just repayment. Just repayment.

“A repayment for so much that you have done for me,” you try, and manage a kind of weak and gasping laugh before she takes pity on you and talks again. Something in Kanaya Maryam unfreezes at the thought that it’s a repayment. There should be no doubt. What else would it be, coming from a known witch?

You don’t entertain the idea that she could have thought you meant ill. Especially not Kanaya.

“There’s no repayment necessary,” she says, finishing opening the box before her.

“You’re my best customer,” you try, and then decide to stick to that thread. “You provide me with tea to protect my health. I can provide you with a charm to protect your home.”

Kanaya looks pleased, then. Despite all of your words that define your relationship to one another, she looks absolutely chuffed. Her face lights up, and she takes the charm with the thumb and first two fingers of two of her hands.

When she takes it, you get that same strange feeling.

The same feeling you had gotten when you tore your hand away from hers that night in the rain. Your skirts stained with streaks of blood, your hair wet and sticking to the top of your forehead. It’s clinging, magnetic. Her fingers, where they brush yours, are both terrifyingly calming and electric. It’s so hard to pull your grip from the bag, so charged as it is with… her.

And when you manage to come further away, you have to hold your hand to yourself. You try to blink away the fuzz.

It’s disorienting, but then Kanaya is there, smiling at you again, and you forget it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!!! next chapter things start picking up a little more! love you all as usual and feedback really makes it for me!!! <3
> 
> EDIT: also just wanted to say that!!! each chapter title is relevant to the contents of a chapter! flowers have meanings and the chapter titles are very important to me! like, for example, chapter 10 is called cypress, which signifies mourning. :) and gorse stands for love in all seasons!


	7. Crocus

From your seat in front of the flames, you stoke the heat for your (very late) dinner. The logs crack, and one of them splits; it gives off a small shower of sparks, spilling out like fruit onto the embers. The stew above your poker steams heartily. The entire cottage is filled with the delicate aroma of smoked pheasant and a cut of seared pork. Perhaps to the delight of your imminently arriving guest..

The couch is made up to sleep on, its old velvet surface cleaned and brushed just for the occasion. It’ll be long enough for him, with his height. Karkat is short, for a dragon. He’s not a runty dragon, though; he simply chooses to be short, in his bipedal appearance. Maybe to seem less intimidating when he’s trying to pass as human.

The bones, a few days ago, told of a visitor on this night, the second evening of the new moon in the month of September. Leaves have begun to change, rain has increased just a bit, and the wind at night has its own wintry bite. Who else would it be, but Karkat?

Of course, you did a second scrying to figure that out. You could have done a ritual, and Seen it, but then you would have been awake for days. It’s easier, some ways. Seeing gets you entirely too close to the Horror. And her grip is tight. It leaves residue of power, despite her kindness.

It’s not raining tonight. Instead, it’s clear and cool. You hear the late summer dying off, with the animals and a few owls making a bit of a racket against the otherwise still air.

You hear the beating of wings from outside, and immediately set aside your knitting. The great rush of air, billowing and beating at your doors, is unseasonal. The only thing it could be is him. Your oldest friend. Carrying his cargo, which you are similarly eager to see.

So you wait for the sound of creaking to quit, and Jaspers to begin mewling excitedly at the base of the door. And as soon as those things happen, you’re on your feet, and casting your silhouette onto the grass.

Karkat is there, the last of his bones cracking into place, and a large brown traveling sack being tossed over his shoulder.

“Evening, Rose. You’re a sight,” he begins, gruff and growly. “Gotten older, have you? I see a wrinkle.”

You pin back a grin like a moth trying to escape from you. “And I see you haven’t spent too much time attempting to polish your scales. Dismal.”

Karkat smiles, toothy and rough and crooked.

And you finally smile at him, before stepping out to wrap him in a hug. He hugs back, and he’s so warm. Like he’s been standing before a furnace.

And you look to his side, almost expecting a second person to be there.

But he’s not.

“Well, he visited me not long ago, as it is,” you say. Like always.

And Karkat gives you a sad smile. Like always.

“I’m starving, you witch,” he says, attempting to break the silence.

“Chase down a deer, you dirty animal,” you reply.

He guffaws, and pats you on the shoulder.

So you and Karkat enter the house alone.

 

* * *

 

_“You’re getting rusty,” you tease him, with a sly smile. He looks at you like a cat that’s been vexed by a fox, and tries to move his feet._

_But, unfortunately, they’re stuck to the floor._

_Karkat hoots a laugh, and a small flame sputters out of the bear trap he calls a mouth. For a few seconds after he gathers the sense to close his mouth while he guffaws, smoke falls from his nose in bursts and sputters._

_Neither he nor Dave are the traveling type alone, but together, anywhere they go they are happy. They work as compliments, balancing acts, matching components to a spell. One without the other is tragedy, and both but separate doesn’t happen often._

_Dave waves his arms about like a windmill, falling backwards. A cloud of dust rises around him from your dirty floors._

_“Rose!” he exclaims, a whine in the midst of his partner’s chortling._

_And Karkat snorts one more time before nodding to you, waving a hand._

_You release his mate, and his feet go flying up like a bird burst into the sky. Dave’s heels knock on the ground, and he groans deeply, wincing. He’s just being dramatic, you know, but you make a show of cooing at him in pity before flopping back into your chair._

_“That’s what I get for winning an argument, I guess,” he taunts half-heartedly. Karkat snorts more smoke out at him._

_This is the thirteenth time they’ve visited in five years. Their trips are numerous and frequent, but they never stay in one place for too long. They’ve been thinking of putting up a house, here, near you. But Dave is flighty, wanting to ‘see’ as much of the world as he can. Never settling, never wanting to be caged by a home. Never wanting to be pinned in the same place for too long. Not again._

_To some degree, you understand it._

_The only familiars he ever managed to keep were birds, after all. Ravens, stereotypical as they were, oily inky black and intelligent as they come. Smart like Dave. But after his last one died, he decided no more. And then only a week later he met Karkat._

_Dragons are hardly familiars. No matter how winged, or black as night. But he and Dave… thicker than thieves, and closer than if they were one person._

_You blink, and your brother is across the room, pressing a hand carelessly to Karkat’s mouth. He’s trying to get him to shut up, to no avail._

_Karkat reaches out with both hands. Grabs him by the hips. Reels him in. Murmurs something just so close to his face. You look away when this peaceful bliss begins to overtake everything on the outside of his façade. It’s a quiet moment, and not yours._

 

“They figured out how to fully pave the town,” Karkat says, bringing you out of your memory.

His hands are gnarled despite his youth, fingertips ending in stunted ebony claws.

“Yes, they did,” you tell him, pouring him another healthy portion of stew. You’ve just finished catching up, and this will be his fourth helping in as many hours. He’s hungry from travel, and after the sixth bowl, he’ll sink into a dreamless nap. The sun rose about an hour ago.

“Finally replacing all of that old stone with some proper brick was a right move,” you tell him. “As well as finally doing away with that old wooden bridge on the road to get out here.”

“I saw that,” Karkat tells you, slurping up a piece of fat from the broth. “Humans. Constantly making progress.”

You nod.

This is something he tends to marvel at.

Karkat, unusual for a dragon, loves humanity. Not just observing them, but watching them grow and prosper. He’s fascinated by technology, by medical developments. His greatest joy is watching a child thrive directly into adulthood, just by the chance happenings in their life.

On the day he told you this, you were walking through a cemetery by the sea. In southern Ireland.

It was a beautiful day.

Sea breeze throwing salt and flecks of water against your face. Stones scuffing under your toes. Nearby chapel not yet in ruin, sun making the air almost pleasantly warm.

With a start, you realize that you’ve been staring into space for a short while. Karkat is staring at you, grinning at some joke or another, likely at your expense.

You raise your eyebrows at him, and he makes a face before waving you off.

“After this one, I’m going to take a nap,” he growls, and you realize that he’s gotten up and gotten another fresh bowl. “Do you have enough wood for me to keep the fire going for a few hours?”

You nod, still a slight distracted.

Karkat huffs a positive noise.

“Go do your errands in town. And your other ones. I know you must have some,” he says, and you nod again.

“I think I will,” you agree.

He snorts.

“Oh, don’t make it sound like it’s totally your idea,” he tells you.

Eyebrows raised at his scolding, you allow a chuckle to whistle from between your lips. “Alright.”

He nods, apparently satisfied.

So you stand, toting your own bowl over to the sink and placing it inside before looking down at yourself. This dress will be good enough for town. Inspecting it, however, you find it has a hole near the upper part of the skirt. You make a rather unladylike face at that hole, sticking your finger through and wiggling it about.

Maybe you could bring it by Kanaya’s for a repair? Surely she knows how to fix a hole in a dress and make it invisible.

You yourself might be capable of some seam work, and making your own cloaks, but you would make a mess of this gown. It would have to be covered with a ribbon, or something.

“Do you want anything in town while I’m gone?” you ask Karkat, where he hunches over his bowl before the fire. He’s gobbling with fervor, eating like an absolute animal. Jaspers has long since jumped up to sit next to him at the table, sniffing around occasionally for scraps. Every now and then he gets a bit of begrudging affection in the form of a pet on the ears.

“I’m good, for now,” he tells you.

And so you pull your cloak over your shoulders, and set your money pouch at your hip, and thread your arm through the handle of your basket.

“Don’t burn the house down,” you say, as a parting goodbye. Karkat makes an obscene gesture at you, and spits a ball of flame into the hearth.

 

* * *

 

 

At the apothecary, you chat with Miss Aradia about her recent trip to the country. There is a farm out there that produces the most pleasant little jars, she says, as she puts several on the counter to display for you.

Their glass nearly shimmers with how round and perfect it is. It’s almost unbelievable that a human’s hands made these. They’re lovely, and just the right size for a decent helping of a poultice for a sore back or ankle.

In the end, she convinces you to buy a box of those little jars, none of them taller or wider than your thumb is long, as well as a new piece of flat cork for making stoppers, and a small ball of twine. When she hands you the twine to put in your basket, you find that it contains a small piece of paper.

It’s an odd yellowy color, and on the back is etched a sigil in bright green ink. It’s a watching sigil; something that you’ve used before to check your traps for new meat.

Aradia is frowning when you draw it from within the ball, and steals it from your hand.

“I’ll have a word with my supplier,” she tells you.

It’s pretty harmless, as far as spells go, but you nod anyway. If someone was watching her, maybe she would be in danger?

“Please do,” you tell her, and lay a hand on her arm. “For your own sake.”

You would hate for her to get run out of town, or be in any sort of danger. Over the past years, she’s become something of a friend, as you’re one of her biggest buyers nowadays.

Casting a look around her shop, for any other possible danger, you see only a small tree on the windowsill. Its branches are almost braided together, they grow so intricately. An oak, perhaps? And what a small oak. You’ve heard of this kind, however.

Bonsai, aren’t they called?

It’s a trivial thing to notice, but you do. Nothing can be spared your glance.

A similar tree grows outside Kanaya’s shop. Maybe it’s the soil in the area.

As you step out of the shop, letting Aradia finally wave you away, your gown catches on the door.

It rips, tearing an even bigger hole in your gown maybe the width of your palm. You hiss a curse. Blast it. This was one of your favorites. Calming, lavender, still with the empire waist style that you adore so much.

But maybe it’s time you passed that era of fashion.

It was pretty long-lived, in itself. The gowns today are much more stifling, and less good for wandering about in. Bending over is also much more difficult. Hm.

You hold the gown up for inspection as you trot a few more paces, and take a glance about. Two other women walk by, one of them in the latest fashion, and another in something slightly older. Both wearing a full corset.

The thought of having to wrap something that constricting around yourself on a daily basis again… you cringe, careful to not do it within eyeshot of the two ladies. They looked so good in their outfits, but… ugh. Your body is fuller, you’ll admit. It’s just the way you’re built. And you’ve never had success in looking so skinny. Which at the moment, is fashionable.

Maybe you could ask Kanaya for advice? She’s a tailor, and has never seemed to judge your clothing before. In the very least she could provide a mend.

You drop the gown from your grasp, careful to cover the hole with your basket, and start walking.

Yes. Kanaya. You’ll be able to visit her again. And none too soon, either. Her lovely face always seems to refresh your day.

When you arrive in her doorway, you’re greeted with a thin cloud of dust, and the sound of several heavy things toppling to the floor. Kanaya’s voice comes from within, an exhausted sort of sigh, and you hear a few more things crash down.

Stepping inside the shop proper, you can see that there are empty shelves, and a few new racks that you assume are meant to hold the pile of fabric bolts on the floor. Kanaya stands above the pile, lips twisted, hands on her hips. It’s adorable.

“Did I come at a bad time, Miss Maryam?” you ask, lightly, and her head snaps up, face lighting like a moth’s wings in the sunlight.

She picks up more bolts than seem humanly possible.

“Oh, just remodeling a tad,” she says, with a smile. “Come in.”

You do as she says, and proceed to lay your cloak and basket across the front table.

The old shelf creaks as a few rolls are lain across its lowest plank. Again, Kanaya picks up more bolts than you would be able to lift in two different trips. It’s odd, but she must be used to this. You don’t comment on it, even if you can’t imagine that her slender frame would be strong enough. Instead you peer over to the window display, inspecting the latest fashion.

It would be fetching on you, no doubt. But at what cost?

“What can I do for you?” you hear, entirely closer than you were expecting.

You jump a little, turning on a heel to face Kanaya.

“Done already?” you ask, blinking.

She laughs. “Not quite, but I can make time for you.”

The ‘for you’ bit makes you feel warm in the face.

“If you insist, I came about – “

“Oh dear!” she exclaims, and before you can show her your dress, she’s holding it in her hand.

“Ah, yes,” you supply, intelligently, “That.”

“It’s ripped. And what fine fabric, too,” she mutters, looking over the tear with a firm frown set in her mouth.

The touch of her fingers at your waist makes your face feel even warmer. And she’s so close. You’ll need smelling salts, like some rich woman seeing a ghost. Or a looser collar on your dress, maybe.

“Yes. I had thought about retiring the gown, and getting something more… new,” you say, and if Kanaya were a cat, her ears would have perked with excitement.

“I had noticed that you were fond of the empire style waist,” she said, rubbing the cloth between her fingers.

“Yes, it’s much more comfortable, especially for yard work,” you admit to her.

After a split second of thinking, she speaks again. “I could repair this one, as well. It would be such a waste to do away with.”

That bit makes you smile. It would do very well to not have to get rid of this gown.

“There are styles that would not be restrictive, if you like,” Kanaya says, with a smile, and without waiting for an answer, waves for you to follow her a slight deeper into the shop. The bottom edge of Kanaya’s skirts ruffle around a folding screen in the center of the room, and you make haste to trot after her.

The little black boots she wears don’t look too uncomfortable. They don’t have heels. Are those still fashionable, without the little heel? She’s certainly tall and slender enough to do without in the eyes of the public. Or maybe the public prefers a short woman?

“I would like to blend in more easily, yes,” you tell her. “I have some money to spare.”

Kanaya is bent over a table against the wall, and waves for you to hop up onto the platform to be sized. It’s a couple of steps, but you get there easily enough.

You open your mouth to speak, but then you see in the mirror. Just the gentlest touches from Kanaya seem to be straightening the table in front of her. When you blink, the sensation is gone, and the table simply looks well-organized. For the second time today, you have to shake your head to rid yourself of the odd disorientation.

Not much sleep is doing you no service, it seems.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Miss Kanaya murmurs, as she walks toward you with a measuring tape and a little pad of paper in one hand. The pen stuck through it has a vine carved into the edge.

You smile politely, and she continues before you can tell her anything.

“I was getting curious as to how you’ve been, love,” she says. Your desperate brain hooks onto the word ‘love’ and a dove sings sweetly in the farthest reaches of your mind.

“Well, anything to keep me away from my… house,” you say, after some hesitation on what to call Karkat. For all intents and purposes, he is a brother to you. But you don’t quite know whether to bring up the fact that you are staying with a man, alone. Or even have a chance of succumbing to your tendency to ramble when you’re around Miss Maryam. That was much earlier in your acquaintanceship, to be sure. But still.

Kanaya smiles fully then, and tilts her head. The air feels suddenly like velvet, and you feel a warmth tingle from both the pit of your stomach and the back of your mouth.

“Then we should find you a new dress!” Kanaya says, like she’s not already at the ready with her tape, and her arms circling about your middle to get an accurate measurement. It makes you giggle. “It must have been awhile since you had a new one made. I haven’t seen you for a fitting in all five years I’ve been seaming here.”

“I am attached to my old clothes,” you say, and Kanaya nods.

“Most are, once they’ve stopped growing,” she tells you.

You talk about anything and nothing while she gets measurements. Under your arms, down the sides of your arms. Around your waist, around your hips.

At the front and base of your throat.

Your height, some measurements that seem random after a bit of conversation about what you would prefer in a gown. Miss Maryam is a very thorough seamstress.

All of it is so distracting. Especially the fingers at your body. Soft, gentle touches. Firm where they must be, touches at your collarbone light. They make your skin tingle, make you feel as though you might break out in goosebumps, or shiver bodily.

Then she measures a final line from the crux of your elbow, down to waist.

It’s a few presses of fingertips, the light touch of curved nails on the pit of your arm, down to your ribs. It makes you feel weak of breath, short of heart, and your face is hotter in front of her than it’s ever been. And that includes your initial meeting, when you fell into a puddle upon first sight.

And before you know it, it’s over.

Kanaya is helping you down from the pedestal, fingers warm around your elbow. And her face is patient, kind, lovely. One spiraled curl casts a delicate shadow between her eyes. And she’s so close to you.

But you turn, and you leave the fitting area.

“You should come by soon, and I can teach you how to mend the gown yourself,” Kanaya says.

And it’s all you can do to nod, to keep yourself from saying anything particularly stupid. With a happy grin, you leave. Cloak and basket over your arm, into the sunny day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry this chapter was much longer than i wanted, getting it out. as a kind of apology for steering yall wrong last time when i said the next chapter would be out soon, im going to put up two this week! the next one i'll put up on friday!


	8. Mullein

_It was in a dark, cold alley that Dave had found the girl._

_She was one of his many regrets._

_In his youth, Dave was quite popular with the women despite his awkwardness and gangly limbs, and often turned to prostitutes to blind him from his trauma. They were kind to him, either to be there for him in a carnal or comforting sense. You yourself were not prone to giving hugs, and the witch who took you in was not a mother, she made that clear from the start._

_So he would walk the streets, giving the poor and sick some trifles of healing, some soup for Strength and a biscuit for Warmth. They were simple spells, and took a good deal of magic for him to do them himself, but for him, the effort was worth the wellness of strangers. Dave was very kind, then._

_He would do the same for the whorehouses he visited. Some minor bits of easy protection, or health, or defense against venereal diseases._

_He stopped when he found her._

_It was one of his nights walking about to make fire for the homeless, and he came across a very empty little dank alleyway. Usually this meant a fresh death, one that had yet to be cleaned up. The poor would stay away from fresh corpses._

_He was about to head down the alley, to put a coin in their eye and allow safe passage past the Rift. But then he heard it: a soft wail, a croaking cry of a baby. An infant, cold and desperate. And the weeping pulled at him. Like an invisible, inexplicable force it pulled at him. He felt his magic connect to something similar, to something akin to the traveling of his time into another’s._

_His trot ran into a sprint, and he skidded to a stop in front of her._

_It was a girl he’d been with. A girl he’d managed to cure of her consumption and syphilis, a girl he’d given some money as well. He’d been with her a few times, as she offered warmth to him that didn’t feel adequately provided by the hot stew at home._

_She was dead. Holding a child, a whimpering little baby girl, swaddled in thick blankets and dripping milk from her lips. Hungry. Cold._

_Dave almost ran from the spot. This child was… his. This child was his, and her mother was gone, most likely cast out by her brothel when the pregnancy succeeded. His guilt ran through him in coursing rivulets, and without thinking, he snatched up the baby, and ran._

_He ran to you, panicked, tears running down his face and sleeping cargo in his arms, having worn herself out from screaming, most likely. The soul connection you felt to the child was instantaneous._

_“What have you done?” you asked. Dave just shook his head, and demanded to find somewhere for her to live._

_“She has to live better than us,” he says, eyes threatening to spill over again. “She has to.”_

 

* * *

 

Stamping your boots on the stoop, you peer in through the open door of Kanaya Maryam’s seaming shop. She’s holding up a needle to the light, just pressing a thread through the eye.

“Are you going to stare all day, or will you actually go in?” a bitter tone announces from behind you, and you turn to sit him with a frown. Karkat laughs at it.

Today, Karkat almost opted to stay in the house, but instead decided to come along. Once awoken from his nap, he had agreed to go out and survey the forest from the air. Things you couldn’t see, things he might. Insisting that you go on to bed, he let himself out and spent most of the dark hours taking stock of the trees and ground.

He wrote it all down for you in his wretchedly awful handwriting, and you looked over his observations while he decided to hunker down for another nap.

It was odd, the things he noticed. More burnt patches, one bigger than hunters could make alone. No visible tracks to and from it. A few more nests of dead animals. Most birds, several bunnies or foxes. That alone was troubling. Needing to clear your head, you had decided to make good on your promise to Miss Maryam, and go pay her the promised visit. Karkat was half asleep when you began to leave, stretched across the hearth.

He’d mumbled something about not spending enough time with him, and you’d snorted. His scales had ruffled like a glimmer on his skin, irritated, and sneezed a plume of smoke right back at you. Then he’d hopped up and come along.

Here, though, at Miss Maryam’s shop, the air is light and even cheery.

The troubles of the forest are long gone as you step further into the doorway.

“You go run your errands, and I’ll meet you at the well in a few hours,” you tell him.

Karkat rolls his eyes, but nods.

“Sure. Have fun on your date,” he says, turning.

Your face fills with heat so intense it could cook chicken. “It’s not a date!” you hiss.

Karkat sticks his forked tongue out at you, and walks away. “The magic of this shop feels weird, anyway,” he concedes, and you feel yourself lose track of something.

“What?” you ask. There’s no magic on this shop except for your charm. Right?

“It’s just…” Karkat tries, and sort of waves his hands at the air in front of him. “Weird. Not bad though. You have fun.” He finishes, and then he’s halfway across the street. Off toward… hm. Well, you won’t deny him a perusal of the town. It’s not just the advancement of humanity that interests him, after all.

“Alright then,” you say, and allow your attention to shift entirely to the shop in front of you.

Kanaya is watching you, now, a delighted look on her face.

You see a light, silver cross slip from beneath a layer of her clothing, swinging out as she leans sideways to wave you in. Still a member of the church at heart?

“Come in!” she calls, even as you’re stepping toward her in the shop. It smells of incense in here today, and tickles your nose in the most pleasant way. “Who was your friend?”

“Oh, just a friend of my brother’s,” you tell her, setting down your things. “Here for a visit and to help with a few things before he’ll be on his way again.”

“That’s delightful,” she replies, and doesn’t ask any further about him. Your family, though, is not so safe a subject from her attention. “I didn’t know you had siblings.”

Kanaya moves around you, bustling to and fro. She sets out a small kit on a long table she’s very obviously moved out into the open for this occasion. With a swish of her maroon skirts, she’s around you and turning the sign in her window to signal that she’s out for a midday meal.

“Go on, sit,” she says, as you shed the cloak from over your arm, and the torn skirt from your basket.

Her hand is oh so light as she touches you on the arm, guiding you to a chair. It’s a fleeting touch, filling your head with fuzz and excitement; nowhere near the amount she had instilled in you with the measuring, but still. A bit.

“My mother gave birth to only one other before she died,” you answer her earlier question, in lieu of saying something incredibly stupid. “He chose the name ‘Dave’ when we arrived in this land many decades ago. David was too formal for him, and our father only called him something like ‘thing’ in an old Semitic language, instead of giving him a name.”

Kanaya is silent, and you continue on.

“I was named for a rose and decided to keep it, but the English translation,” You add. Kanaya lays out a small pair of ivory-handled scissors, a bigger pair of the same, and a small pincushion. The thread remains in the box for now. “But yes. I grew up with a sibling in my family.”

“Your past sounds rife with misfortune,” Kanaya murmurs softly. And when you look at her, her face is drawn and careful. Suddenly, you feel incredibly guilty for telling her the truth. Sadness is such a horrible look on her face, and you’re the one who put it there.

Reeling back, you begin to stutter apologies.

But Kanaya holds up a single, soft hand.

“No, I’m glad you told me,” she murmurs, so gentle. “Thank you for sharing part of your past with me. I like hearing people’s stories.”

And then she’s smiling again. A little tense at the corners of her mouth, but there’s a grin there. And an honest gratefulness in the draw of her brow. Remarkable. You find your maw hanging open a bit, and your brain blanking for words. What a sudden change, and she’s so kind to you. As she has been for years.

“After all,” she adds, with a chuckle, “Wouldn’t I have to love listening if I wanted to become a seamstress? All some ladies _do_ is talk!”

What started as a crush (you’ll admit at this point) blooms a little into something more in that moment.

So much more that your heart beat increases enough that you can hear it in your ears. And your hands shake as you reach to spread your skirt before her on the table, and you find an irresistible smile yanking like fishhooks on the corners of your lips.

“Are you wearing the crucifix today for that reason?” you ask her, and Kanaya’s eyes light, and she laughs again. This time, it tinkles like bells.

“How did you know!” She says, and touches the chain on her throat. “I was designing a gown for the preacher’s wife today!”

You giggle at that, and Kanaya follows suit.

And then, things go smoothly.

Easily enough, the two of you sink into the sewing lesson. Kanaya is kind and patient, if not a little blunt and deliberate with the way she speaks. She makes jokes that you barely catch sometimes. She touches your hands to guide you through the clumsy stitches. She scolds you for sticking yourself with the needle, and she talks to you genially throughout the process.

Before you know it, the hour has gone.

Kanaya is sitting oh so close to you. Smelling faintly of herbs and the oil she uses in her sewing machine, thigh touching yours and knees knocking when she leans over to point something out. The butterfly wings of your soul are beating in tandem with your heart, and she is so so _so_ close. Her eyes are so beautiful from here, her nose so pointed and her cheeks so full and red.

A knock comes rattling at the glass pane of her shop window.

You see a gaggle of women standing outside the door, and when you glance to the left, you can see Karkat there, raising an eyebrow at you. He’s got a hefty bag from the butcher over his shoulder, and another small thing encased in waxed paper.

Both you and Kanaya sit bolt upright, and inch away from each other and the sewing. Your skirt is repaired, so that’s good! Maybe it’s been done for awhile, and you’ve just been sitting here?

Oh dear.

You stand, brushing off your clothing and flopping your cloak over your arm.

Kanaya jumps to her feet as well, looking just as embarrassed and possibly even a little more so.

“You have an appointment!” you exclaim, piling your skirt into your basket. “I should be going, then!”

“Yes!” Kanaya says, looking at the floor. Her face is so red. “Yes, this is a decent client, and I would hate to be late.”

So you don’t say another word on the subject.

And you curtsey.

And Kanaya curtseys.

“Another time, Miss Maryam!” you tell her, and she squeaks the same back at you before you’re stumbling out the door and right through the group of onlookers.

Karkat smirks at you, but thankfully keeps himself silent as you hold up a hand toward him.

His teeth are sharp as he cackles.

What would Dave do, were he here?

He would laugh, and comment on the color of your face. When you shoved him away, he would tease you harder, maybe mentioning something crass or lewd.

 _”You were practically in her lap, sis!”_ he would guffaw, and run around to shield himself behind Karkat.

You would tell him to shut up, and stop being childish.

He would point out that you were twins, and then have to dodge a handful of dirt.

Karkat walks beside you now, a dim reminder of what could be.

Maybe you could make a deal with the Horror, and visit Dave soon? She would be okay with that, hopefully. So long as you carried a talisman and left Karkat here to watch the forest. That cliffside wouldn’t be too terribly far, you don’t think.


	9. Anthurium

Gathering is one of your favorite things to do.

Stepping out into the early morning, as the sun is rising, and the forest takes its first breath of the day, you feel like a part of it. The grass holds dew that wets your boots, the last of the night’s crickets drift to dormancy, and the morning’s early birds and frogs get the worm.

“I hate rainy areas,” Karkat mopes, holding one of your old cloaks to himself against the chill of the early day.

As usual when he’s not around other humans, his feet are bare.

His claws rake the wet earth, and his mere presence sets off different reactions in the wildlife.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to come out to help me,” you remind him with a hum.

Currently, you’re scouring a new scorch mark near a small creek in the woods. It’s a thinner-treed area, with tall, long trunks ringed with palest tan and gray. The scorch mark is just that—blackened, nearly perfectly round, and… surrounded by a strange ring of fungi.

If it weren’t so new, you would say that the fungi were feeding off of the damp climate and the newly dead plants. But it _is_ new. And all of the fungi are the purest, cleanest white.

It’s starting to feel magical.

A bad feeling creeps into your bones.

What supernatural thing could be making this happen? You’re no warrior, just an observer of the processes of life and death. You dream of things to come on occasion, and you help the people in the village live. But you’re no defender. And whatever this is, is obviously hurting the forest.

“It looks like warring spirits,” Karkat murmurs.

His eyes are narrowed at the ground.

“How long did you say this had been happening?” he asks, and your heart sinks even more.

“I… maybe a few months, now?” you guess, wringing the handle of your basket.

With Karkat, you can be vulnerable. He’s your friend, and he could protect you. Powerful friends are useful.

“The first mark… I thought it was from village hunters,” you admit. Maybe it was foolish, casting that presumption aside. Out of the corner of your eye, you see your dragon friend hitch the cloak a little higher around his pointed ears. Another thing he doesn’t bother hiding when not around other humans besides yourself.

And Dave, of course.

Karkat doesn’t speak for a long, tense moment. His eyes are still narrowed, and he’s thinking, but he’s not saying anything.

“Just keep yourself safe,” he says, finally. After what seems like yet another endless eon, he steps around the ring and goes to rip a branch of English Ivy from a tree. With his other hand, he wraps it tightly in a shuttle about his hand, and then shoves it into your basket.

Karkat walks along ahead of you for a good while, using his superior vision to scout for useful plants. After living with a witch himself for so long, he has a good eye for not only magical components but also edible plants, and delicious herbs. So far this morning, aside from the ivy, he’s found you a fox skull and a few bones left from that. Once boiled it will make a fantastic medium through which to predict some halfway decent animal migration patterns coming in the spring.

“How has… She been?” Karkat asks, quietly, while you both stoop to take a few sprigs from a mistletoe plant that has taken over a small oak sapling.

The emphasis on the ‘she’ does not go unnoticed. He’s asking about the Horror.

“Oh, you know,” you say, at first, and Karkat gives you a withering glare. It makes you laugh.

“The Price has yet to come,” you inform him. “I have been waiting for her to at least mention the cost for her aid and residence in my soul, but beyond the usual of processes and continuing events, she has taken nothing.”

Karkat grunts, nods, and stands straight. The cloak is thrown back, over his shoulder, now. It’s a bit warmer than it was when you set off.

“However,” you add, and you can see the line of his shoulders straighten. One of his yellow eyes peeks at you over his shoulder, and his ear twitches with listening. “She seems… stressed.”

That makes him stop in his tracks. “Stressed?” he asks, turning halfway to look at you, until you catch up to him. When you do, he paces himself to your stride.

“Yes,” you confirm. “Some kind of urgency. Maybe even a touch of excitement.”

After saying that out loud, you feel her move within you, almost like she’s making your stomach flip and your skin prickle. It’s an odd sensation. Karkat’s eyes are suspicious again when you look back up at him. His face is creased with both concern and interest, but you know he won’t ask about it. That’s between yourself, and her.

“Weird,” is all he says.

And then moves on.

As you walk, stopping every now and then to chat, or to gather, or to check underneath a bush, you see some of the summer’s very last flowers clinging to the season. It reminds you of Kanaya, and the gifts she brings you. Maybe you should visit her again, tonight.

“What kind of blood are you using for the ritual?” Karkat asks, as he meticulously plucks several just-green sprouts from the ground beside a patch of clover.

“My own,” you tell him. “This year, I won’t need much. I came upon some good and very old wine that I paid fairly for, I can use that in combination.”

“Good,” he says. “We can add a spark of mine to the mix.”

That’ll give the magic a tad more strength. Dragon’s blood tends to be swelling with magic, and very self-preserving. Karkat will probably give more than you need, with the scales he’s also donated to your pot for the coming full moon. It’s lucky that he’s here for it.

You tend to use the solstices for reinforcing existing rituals, but this Full moon, tonight, is halfway between either solstice. And so, when you do it, it will be effective for refreshing old spells. They’re easy spells. The one for your disguise, the one for protection of the town and forest against true evil, and the one for local spiritual balance. Everything else, you leave to the way life goes.

Every year, you make sure to do at least one for the women. They deserve so much more than you can give.

Jaspers jumps out of a bush and lands in Karkat’s arms, licking a bit of something from his own nose. Back from the morning hunt, then? Karkat yelps at him, and growls. Jaspers just purrs at him, meowing plaintively. Karkat lets him stay.

“I was thinking of making a new and simpler focus object,” you tell him, as you lead the way back to your cottage. “I have some beads of amethyst and a silver chain woven with twine.”

Karkat nods when you look back at him. You pull the string of beads from within your shirt, showing it to him.

“That sounds solid,” he says. His toes scrape on a rock as you pass over a small hill. “It will imbue well.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jaspers wiggles back out of Karkat’s grip, then, and runs off into the forest after something else. He’ll be around, nearby somewhere, like he tends to be when you’re gathering.

Karkat walks by your side, then, until you get to the cottage. He talks idly, mostly complaining about the weather here. You know that most of his vocabulary is complaints, and you don’t fault him for it. There’s a little spark in his eye that you haven’t seen for a long, long time. Maybe whatever’s going on with the forest is getting him excited, as well?

He doesn’t seem to think there was an urgent need for you to protect yourself.

Maybe whatever’s causing this simply needs to run its course.

Maybe it’s bigger than either he or you.

Is it a god, of some sort?

The quiet presence in your mind shakes her head no. It’s so firm that you nearly stumble on your own skirts, tripping a slight. Karkat catches your arm, holding you up with confusion in his eyes.

“The devil was that?” he asks, but you’re too busy desperately asking more questions to the Horror to answer. She says nothing, nearly disappears from you.

The birds have gone quiet, and you hear Karkat gasp from next to you. He straightens you up, and you stare straight ahead. Standing on the front walk of your house, is Kanaya.

“Oh!” you exclaim, and become dismally aware of your dirty clothes and rumpled appearance. Heat fills your cheeks.

“Are you too busy for me to stop by?” Kanaya asks, as you and Karkat begin walking nearer to the door of the cottage. Her voice is like a bell, her cheeks ivory, her lips so full and painted with rouge… “I forgot to tell you I would be stopping by for a few colors I need to do young Jake’s cloak.”

While you open and close your mouth clumsily, Karkat steps forward and holds out a hand. It’s conspicuously free of claws, as are his feet and ears returned to ‘normal’.

“Karkat Vantas, Miss Rose’s… brother,” he says, smiling. There’s little family resemblance apart from the dark skin and shorter height, but then most English people think all people of color look the same nowadays.

“Oh!” Kanaya exclaims, echoing your earlier near-shout, and her smile could shine brighter than the moon. “I’ve heard about you!”

Kanaya holds out her hand, placing the fingers over Karkat’s palm. He cups the fingers, and draws them up to his mouth to give her a customary greeting. He is smiling politely, doesn’t linger too long on the swift kiss, but there’s something off about it.

Almost like they knew each other already.

You find yourself quirking a brow at the quizzical thought, and then casting it aside. How would Kanaya know a dragon? Much less one that barely comes around every few years? You shake your head to ignore the notion, and step forward.

With you, Kanaya leans forward. As women often do, she kisses you on both cheeks, and you do the same to her in return. The drag between your skin is exhilarating, as is the softness of her lips on your face. Good light in heaven.

With one hand, you shoo Karkat away.

“Her dyes are on the kitchen windowsill,” you tell him. “Fetch them for me, dear?”

You just barely see him roll his eyes, and he takes your basket from you and trudges into the house.

There’s a quiet moment you share with Kanaya. The lovely morning, the wind sending a thick curl across her forehead. And she’s got as many eyes for you as you do for her. All of them.

When the silence is broken by a bleat from your goat and a crow from a raven flying overhead, Kanaya looks down toward your chest. From the folds of fabric there she fishes out the necklace. It sparkles in the light from her grasp, and she grins at it.

“It’s beautiful, is it new?” she asks, and seems genuinely interested in your response.

“Yes,” you tell her. “I went ahead and made it. It will be my new focus.”

Kanaya looks overjoyed. “Less of that drink, then?”

There’s a serious note in the air, and you nod. Kanaya seems genuinely proud and relieved when she sighs, and the gentlest set of her brows comes along to her as she drops the beads back atop your bosom. Nothing needs to be said about her pride, to you. And it feels rewarding, to have her acknowledge your progress.

Karkat comes back out of the house, holding a small wooden box in hand.

That’s right, the dyes. You’d nearly forgotten, even after such a short time.

“In a few days, we’ll be having supper, before Karkat leaves,” you say, out of the blue. It’s true, but you have no idea why you said it. Kanaya looks confused in all of her good nature, and Karkat rolls his eyes so hard they might as well just run away from his head.

It’s quiet for a good several minutes before he speaks, excusing your awkwardness.

“I think what Rose is trying to say,” he says, elbowing you, “Is that she would like for you to come. We’ll have good food abound.”

You nod, embarrassed yet again, and Kanaya laughs behind her hand.

“Of course. And I shall bring something sweet,” she agrees. And she takes the box of dyes, and is on her way.

Karkat complains very loudly as you whack him multiple times over the head for making you look bad. But he laughs, and you laugh. And it feels light, above the growing unease with the woods.

 

* * *

 

After the solstice ritual is done, and the ingredients are sizzling in the pot and boiling down into dust, smelly as they are, Karkat leans back on the old velvet couch.

The necklace around your neck feels heavy with purpose, but your magic is so settled around you that you almost feel nothing. None of the buzz, none of the irritation or skin static from before. It was harder than you thought to make, but the focus object will help you recover more quickly. Your magic will be weak for maybe half a moon cycle, but after that you will be much more balanced.

The recollection of your first ever focus object comes to mind. It was a stone. An especially smooth stone, with a hole right through the center. Your witch mother, Roxanne, told you to never look through it. She was an old lady, commonly lavished upon for her generosity, taking in two young children from “the Africa” who only spoke their native language, and then some French. This witch mother housed you, up until the day of your twenty-fourth birthday. That was the day she passed, without warning or ceremony. It left you a halfway decent amount of money in the bank to live off of in a different town. But a few days passed after her death, and then her enchantments disappeared. And some heretics in her town burned her home, and everything within. You got a few books, took Dave, and the money, and ran. To Scotland.

One day, though, before she died, she was having a party. You looked through that hole in your focus stone.

You saw what seemed to be a monster more horrible than anything you’d ever seen. A young teenager, seeing something that made you wish it were a _obia_ or _buda_. It had teeth instead of eyes, but could still somehow look directly at you from where it stood atop a lantern pole in the city. To this day, you've no idea what it was.

…

“The amethyst was a good choice,” Karkat murmurs, to no one. Maybe to you.The ritual has been done, and the both of you are very fairly exhausted. You in particular are sore and tired from the required blood loss and the stamina inherent in standing for hours and bending to draw sigils.

He slurps a blackberry into his mouth. You can hear him crunching on the seeds like bones.

The bandages on your arms hurt, but the cuts will be sealed sooner than later. That’s part of the recovery process.

“Hmm.” It’s very late.

The crackling fire and the shifting of logs is all you see or hear for maybe twenty minutes, if you counted each second. Dave always used to do that, when you were children. Time was one of his favorite things to get lost in. Or to.

He used to do his spells over a crystal sun dial.

The thought aches.

...perhaps it’s time for sleep.

Just as you’re rising to your feet to head into the small bedroom, Karkat speaks.

“How is the child’s family?” he asks.

Oh. So he remembers.

Jaspers winds under your skirts, around your ankles, before trotting off into the bedroom. He’ll nap by your side tonight, as you’re weak. As you dream of this family with whom you share the barest of soul connections, as their lineage descends from your brother’s. As twins, you were invariably connected. His descendents ring like tines in your heart.

You sigh.

“Her last great-grandchildren died last winter, old friend,” you tell Karkat, without turning around. “They lived to be very old indeed.”

Karkat grunts, and you feel like he might be nodding. There’s a shifting of fabric against fabric. Maybe he’s turned toward the wall. Away from you. It _has_ been a long time since he has asked about the child. More than one visit has passed between questions.

“They’re still fairly affluent, having struck a graphite mine somewhere east of here,” you inform him. The door squeaks only a little as you pull it shut behind you.

Karkat says nothing for awhile, and then you hear a quiet, “Thank you.”

You leave only enough of a crack to see the undulating of the fireplace light on the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!!!!!!! next chapter we see dave!
> 
> oh also thank you for your patience! im going on a trip on saturday, and i will try to get to the next editing promptly but work is busy and stressful so we'll see :) i love yall, and thank you all for your comments and interest, and i hope you have a great rest of your sunday!


	10. Cypress

“The forest seems different today,” Karkat says, the day after your moon ritual.

Today, you need him more than ever. The magic took a lot more out of you than you thought it would. Maybe you’re feeling your age. Maybe the Horror is just tired. After all, you take her energy to feed into your ‘youth’.

Right now, she’s curled up in the warmest corner of your soul, wrapping around it like a cold, wet cloth. It makes your insides feel cooler than usual, makes you feel weary and weak. You saw a couple of actual wrinkles around your mouth and eyes this morning. Karkat didn’t comment, choosing instead to be smart about it and keep his mouth shut.

“It’s whispering,” Karkat adds.

He can hear things that you can’t. You walk slowly, looking around for signs of improvement of the forest itself. Or maybe the opposite. It’s possible that whatever you were defending the village from didn’t take a shine to your protective enhancement.

“The herb gathering wasn’t as plentiful this morning as it should have been,” you say. Karkat frowns at you.

“I knew you were hiding something from me today,” he growls. “And not just your exhaustion.”

“It could have just been because I’m weak,” you say, and give him a reprimanding glare. He has no right to scold you on your _own_ forest. You are the highest witch of this area and this forest that you know of. It is your responsibility. Not his. You have no active role in the protection, but a passive one.

Then something you see makes you regret that.

A shallow frog pond lies maybe twenty paces off your long-beaten path betwixt the trees. A deer lies on its side, halfway in the water. It’s soiled itself, and it’s positioned as if it were drinking as its life left its body.

You cover your mouth, and feel intensely nauseous. The pool smells just awful. Rancid, rotten with the deer’s blood, but also poisoned with something else. The death of the fish in the pool, and then something more… artificial. Gasoline? Rubber?

How did rubber get into your forest?

Karkat walks up to it, scowl fixed on his brow and mouth, hands clamped together behind his back. You can hear his claws scraping anxiously on themselves. It’s awful, like the sound of grinding teeth.

“Do you know anything about this?” Karkat simply asks.

Smoke drips from his lips, and you know from experience that he’s about to burn the pool. Good riddance. Burn all of the infection from it, so that it doesn’t spread.

“No,” you say. A tremor lines your throat, and you step back.

Molten fire billows in an instant from between Karkat’s teeth. For a second you see his lips turn to scales, and his forehead ripple onyx. Karkat’s almond-shaped eyes squint against the light of the fire. His pupils are narrow, nearly invisible against the bright yellow sclera.

For a long moment, all you can smell is searing flesh.

When he’s done, the air only carries a heavy odor of smoke.

And you walk away, without waiting. There is yet more forest to survey. Luckily, this was near the end of the path.

And the trees are very, very quiet.

 

* * *

 

Later that day, the two of you have decided not to talk about the forest. That’s a conversation to be had in a day or so, before Karkat leaves. As of yet, the only thing you can do is defend against it. As an ancient creature, he will have more advice than your own knowledge can supply. But again, it is for another time.

The rice porridge smells good, especially with the honey and ghee from Karkat’s bag. He carries some around at all times, as well as some spices, just to flavor certain dishes, because apparently Europeans ‘don’t know how to flavor their food, Rose’.

It reminds you of how Dave was upon tasting English food. He claimed it was too bland, not flavored, none of it spicy and too fatty. You asked him what he expected, and he shrugged. He did like chocolate, though. Sweet, sweet sugar and chocolate.

 _”If they can buy our people and enslave them to harvest it, then it’s only right that I eat the fruits of their labor,”_ You remember him saying one day, after plucking a piece of the delicacy from a tray of samples in London. It wasn’t the smartest thing he ever said, but you admired the sentiment.

Karkat is looking into the fire, cradling a teacup betwixt his claws.

You’re stirring gently, and it’s quiet.

“What are you thinking about?” Karkat asks, pouring himself another too-hot-for-yourself cup, leaves and all. When he breathes out, it smells like toasting herbs.

You think for a second, blinking.

“Nothing, really,” you tell him. You add a pinch of precious salt to the porridge. It’s almost done, and then it will sit in a hot pot on your extra hearth for a few hours. There are two in your house. One is near the sink, and you almost never use it, preferring to be old-fashioned, instead.

“Oh, do share, mysterious maiden,” He cracks, and the heavy sarcasm of it makes you chuckle.

You let the moment sit, and fall, and wash around your ankles like the beginnings of a warm bath. Scents in the air, lavender breezing in every now and then from the patch outside your window. The evening is bristling with activity again, and you wonder if the silence is just in the forest before stopping yourself.

Karkat shifts, crossing his feet in the opposite direction. And you stir the pot some more.

“Do you ever regret it?” you ask.

And then you can’t even hear Karkat’s breath.

You look over at him, and his inner eyelids blink at you. You can imagine his wings stretching, and resettling.

“Regret what?” he asks you, and you turn back to the heat. It’s hard to face him, suddenly. Hard to look at the reminders, and the truth.

While he remains stolid in his silence, like stone, you use a thick cloth to pick up the pot from the fire, and move it to the stove. On your way back to the stove, you pick up your freshly cleaned (thanks to Karkat) spits, all three of them, and one of the rabbits you’d retrieved from a snare this morning.

“Loving him. Do you regret it?” you ask. This is the first time you’ve spoken of him like this since… a long time ago.

Karkat is a dragon. And dragons have one mate for life. All of their millennia-long lives.

In your throat is a hard lump. Your eyes feel burnt, and your teeth like iron gates.

Dave began to forget, and Karkat did not.

Dave grew old, and gray. And Karkat did not.

Dave died.

And Karkat...

“No, I don’t,” comes the rumbling reply.

When you tip your chin up to look at him, Karkat is staring at a place far away. His eyes are lidded halfway, and the smile on his face is so peaceful and lasting that you almost find yourself grinning, as well. Even with the tears threatening at your eyes. Karkat has his jaw loose, his head cocked as if waiting for some phantom kiss.

“I could never regret loving your brother, Rose.”

He’s silent for a long moment after that, just staring into the fire.

You could only guess what he sees. As you go back to skinning the food, you remember, yourself. Dave’s blindness coming back full-force with age. His familiar face beginning to wrinkle, his soul weakening. The moment when his light disappeared from your magic, and you were only left with yourself.

“Do you?” comes the question, and it takes you a minute to figure out what he’s asking. “Do you ever regret loving your family?” Your only family.

It’s harmless, but it makes you pause. Do you regret that?

“No,” you murmur eventually. “But I often lament his absence.”

Karkat chuckles wetly. “I think the correct word here is ‘mourn’ in English, Rose.”

“Hush,” you scold him.

It’s quiet, again.

“There was more kindness in him than the world could handle, Rose,” Karkat almost whispers. “More kindness than the world deserves.”

It’s… it’s just mournful fools speaking of people they have lost, but. You want to agree with him, and agree with this fallacy. This painful, and bright, truth.

“Yes,” you tell him. “I know.”

As if waiting for that sentence, there comes a knock at the door.

The both of you are shaken out of your sadness by the sound. Jaspers hops over to the door from his place on Karkat’s shoulder, and yowls happily at it.

You’re just done skinning the rabbit, so you lay it atop the hearth to clean momentarily. Karkat waves you to the door, and moves toward the food preparation.

“That must be your woman,” he tells you. And despite the grim conversation preceding, you find your embarrassment stitching into your sleeve.

Without further delay, you move to the door. You take enough time preening in the reflection of the glass picture by the entrance that she knocks again. Karkat snorts, and watches you dust off your skirt and adjust your apron. You give him the least pleasant sneer you can manage, and then open the door. Kanaya is waiting there, a towel thrown over a shallow basket that she cradles in her arms.

 

“I’ve brought trifle, Rose,” she says.

And the world goes away except for her, in that moment. When she says your name, you feel a smile break out across your face. Her eyes are deer-like, outlined with dew and jet black for an instant. Deep brown, and then, returned to normal. It’s imagined, definitely. You’re just much overcome with… what you have. Your ailment toward Miss Maryam.

“I’ve not got a good hand for baking, sadly,” she says, as you stare. “So I stopped into the baker’s by the governor’s son’s house on my way.”

“Invite her inside, fool,” Karkat cracks from over by the hearth, and you’re embarrassed into shutting your mouth. You can feel what is most likely a puce flush rippling all the way back to your ears.

“Right, yes,” you say, as Kanaya laughs into her hand. You step back, saying things you hope are intelligent as you offer her space to step inside. Karkat rises only to wipe off a hand and take hers to greet her, and then he goes straight back to finishing up on the rabbit.

“We’ve just started on the stew,” you tell her. A lie, but a soft one to make her feel better about… something. Just something. Anything to possibly make her happy. Kanaya gently sets her basket down atop the table, and removes the towel. Very properly and neatly, she lays out the cloth, folding it into a triangle. And on this, she lays three individual trifles. The little glass ramekins they dwell in are gently fluted on the edges, and paired with tiny crystal spoons.

The sponge on the bottom looks perfectly baked, and the custard within appears just so smooth and delicious. It’s hard to believe a baker in your small town made these. But then, you don’t often eat desserts. They’re not a necessity.

“Oh my,” you tell her, once she’s flipped the extra edges of the cloth over the tops of the desserts. “These look expensive. For our little party, no less.”

Kanaya’s own nose pinks a little, now. “It is a special occasion for me,” she says. “Besides, the baker owed me a favor.”

Whatever kind of special occasion she might be talking about is unbeknownst to you. Simply said, you grin and accept anything she might have to say.

 

* * *

 

Kanaya is lightly playing a tambourine you pulled from a high shelf. Dust flies from the surface when she hits a spot she hasn’t yet, and it catches the light more merrily than the gleam of Karkat’s smiling teeth, or the flash of your bangles against the fire.

It’s a night of talking, a night of fun. There’s no need for wine, as the sweetness from those delectable trifles filled your veins and made the stars shine golden through the window. Karkat dances in matching steps to your own, as the two of you hold one hand to the opposite of your partner, and you step in time with the beat.

Your chill cottage is warm tonight, the sofa pushed aside from the floor when Kanaya began to hum a familiar tune. It was a song that has the same notes everywhere you go, be it from colonialism or just humanity’s cognizance across oceans. And you and Karkat know the same words.

Words that Dave taught the both of you, long ago.

Your feet are clumsy as you laugh and sing things neither of you really remember all of. Kanaya whistles a stream of notes as you switch to an English folk dance. And then it’s her turn to get up, seamlessly working into sharing a dance with you, a dance with Karkat, and then the three of you hopping together to make a song.

Jaspers sleeps before the hearth.

And it’s nearly as if you never needed any music at all to feel so merry.

The air is alight as you doff your outer layers, leaving you in plainclothes entirely more familiar to your home in Africa. You drink some water from the barrel outside, and you catch Kanaya admiring the bareness of your arms, and the shapeliness of your form.

Karkat drinks from a bottle of fire brandy he brought with him, and offers you a sip. You shake your head, and you sit, breathing heavily, in a chair.

Karkat is softly drunk, and smiling dreamily at the fire, when Kanaya packs her basket and says her goodbyes. He clasps hands with her before she leaves, in a lingering shake. And you wrap yourself once more in your cloak, at least, to walk your guest to the path.

“I had a wonderful time,” Kanaya says, so softly and happily in the night. And in the moonlight, she is luminous. The moon almost shines through her. The clear night offers no clouds to shade from the spirits, no cover under which to not be set in gleaming relief.

You watch, rapt, as Kanaya’s gasps make a fog. Her breathing is slowing down, steadily, and her hair is a fuzzy halo about her head.

When she touches you, it’s unexpected. Kanaya’s basket is on the ground, and she’s running a hand from your elbow, down to your wrist. And you’re drowning in the touch, falling for her eyes and grasping for breath as she picks up your wrist.

 

It’s dizzying, and she’s leaning in, to you.

Your mouths are so close. The tips of your noses brush each other. It could be centuries, standing there, inhaling each other’s air and swaying back and forth in the chilly moor breeze.

Your palm sparks like lightning as she brings it to her face.

And when she kisses it, you find yourself unable to breathe.

Gently, she inhales against that pulse point in your wrist, and then presses her lips to your skin once more.

She turns, picking up her basket, silently turning her back on the house.

You watch in dumbfounded silence until she disappears from view.

And you grip tight against the wind, rushing inside to hold yourself against the door.

That night, you dream neither of spiders, otters, fish, nor butterflies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! hope everyone had a good read, and happy early birthday to both dave and dirk!!! hooplah!!! comments would be nice, just so i can see how i've been doing with this fic! i love yall <3


	11. Mint and Lavender

The next day, you’re floating on air. Karkat takes the day to go to to the nearest cliffside and bathe his scales by the sea; he grew up with still water surrounding him, but claims that there is little better for cleaning every nook and cranny than the salt and sand of the spirits of the ocean. You give him that, and wave him off with a promise of going to get some olive oil and crude oil if you can find it, in town.

It feels silly, but you’re also thinking of walking by Kanaya’s. Maybe she’s in.

Maybe in the shadow of the corner of her shop, she will bless your hand with another kiss.

As you bid goodbye to the empty house, setting your wards in place, you’re filled with a childish glee. You could walk by, and wave hello.

Oh, it makes you feel so young.

Her feelings are the same as yours! Her feelings are romantic toward you!

Oh, and when she kissed your hand…

Her lips were so _soft_.

Like gossamer silk pillows caressing your skin, the touch of a dragonfly landing on your shoulder. Moth’s wings flapping gently and slowly in a summer breeze.

Your hand is a pulsar, a waxing moon and a waning fire in the wake of her touch.

You trip on a rock.

When you look up, catching your breath, the illusion of happiness is shattered.

All of the grass on either side of the road is dead. A two foot line at least. It sprays evenly up the line, and it’s curious. Curious, but not just. Dread sinks into your heart. What does this mean? It’s an omen, certainly. But what does it mean, for you? You can do nothing about whatever is happening - that much has been determined.

But this… this is horrifying.

It’s as if all of the plants have been thoroughly trampled, and then starved of water. But it’s raining, now. The pattering on your hood is proof enough. It showers nearly every day, out here in the moor.

This… it’s like a battlefield, arrowed between the edges of the road. It’s strange, and more than a little frightening.

You begin walking again. Your happiness is interrupted, the bliss of enchantment lost as your pace quickens. Did Karkat notice this all when he left? But he would have left early this morning, nursing his post-drink sickness. It’s likely that he didn’t.

It doesn’t matter.

You need to check on him. Not Karkat, but _him_.

You need to find him.

The town is in danger.

 _Dirk_ is in danger.

 

* * *

 

It’s hours later when you stop by the fountain.

Dirk’s mother had been weeping in the parlor when her maid answered the door. She was distraught at her son’s absence. Before you were ushered back out again, you caught a glimpse of the small portrait of the young boy, in the hands of the lady of the house.

“Please find him,” the woman had said. Her fingers were white in the knuckles, her eyes pink, and her hair a mess as she clutched the picture to her dressing gown. His skin was a good deal lighter, but it was especially evident in the straight-faced visage, just how much he looked like Dave. The same curled hair, the same sharpness of jaw.

“However you knew he was gone,” she had said, and you had left without saying a single word. “Please help me find my son.”

Now, you’re standing by the fountain. You already checked the book shop, the candy store, even the butcher. Maude said she hadn’t seen Dirk for a day or three, yet. Little Jake had perked up when you mentioned his friend, but worried the next minute.

The daughter of the potter down the street had just seemed puzzled. They live on the edge of town, just next to the road that leads to the other half of the woods from your own.

“I saw him walking toward the trees a week ago,” little Jane had said, dusting pots for her father. “Maybe he went to play there.”

You’d cast it off, however.

It’s just the musings of a young girl. And she hadn’t seen Dirk walking that way last night, had she? To be sure, you asked that very question, and she said no.

It’s impolite, but you had left straight afterwards.

Then, you had gone by Kanaya’s shop. That was the last on your mental list. Her smile at seeing you dimmed significantly in the seconds it took you to ask after Dirk. She didn’t know. She looked confused, worried, befuddled. She looked a little angry, a little unreadable. Frustrated. Righteous. And then, after an awful, silent moment, her face descends into stone – expressionless. She had no idea, and with nary a second glance, you left.

Desperately, sitting in the rain on the edge of the fountain, you think. You think back to each location you searched earlier today. You think of the confused looks on the faces of the blacksmith, the disappointment on Kanaya’s lips. You think back to the worry and lack of knowledge on the faces of the townsfolk.

Everyone knew or knew of the young Dirk. But none had seen him.

Determined, you think harder.

What is the one place you haven’t looked? You know you’re missing something. There’s some kind of knot in your brain, a knot that’s keeping you from unraveling the rest. It’s small, coiled, tight and impenetrable, like the knot in a delicate silver necklace.

Your magical fingers pry at the knot, your panic pulls at the strings and curls and pushes forcefully until.

The snarl snaps.

There. The only place you haven’t checked is…

The apothecary.

Rising to your feet, you let the rain pelt against your face and hair as you push toward the small ramshackle shop.

As you walk inside, something feels… off.

The air inside the one room is still and humid. It smells something like rot. And the wind outside whistles on the cracked glass pane. Nothing has ever seemed so dark inside this tiny shop. The shelves are full, and the chimes are tinkling, almost floating in midair. And the mistress of the apothecary sits at her counter.

She grins at you.

“Welcome,” she says. “We have a few things that are lower in price today.”

You charge up to the counter, dripping all over her strangely pristine floor. She does not flinch.

“Where is Dirk Strider?” you ask her, trying to maintain your calm.

And like all the others, she looks confused. She’s trying to figure out who you’re talking about, for a moment, before her eyes light up and she focuses back on your face. “Oh yes, that boy,” she says, slipping from her seat. Teeth hungry, eager to be the center of your attention.

“He’s missing,” you say to her, growing a tad more desperate with each passing second that she doesn’t answer you.

“Missing?” Aradia asks, putting a few curious fingers to her chin. “How odd.”

You sigh, wanting her to answer. But maybe she doesn’t know. She’s the last one, though. She has to know.

“How odd,” she repeats. If she doesn’t know, then maybe you could try and find the right ingredients for a finding spell. Maybe you could ask his mother for a lock of his baby hair, or the portrait. Your Sight would aid you considerably in such an endeavor.

“He must have been spirited away,” she says, next. Almost hopefully?

It catches your attention. “Spirited away?” you ask. It’s not a term you hear often. The last time you heard it, it was a long, long time ago. Dave was talking to Karkat about a group of gods they briefly communed with, in China.

But Megido doesn’t answer your question. “All of this death,” she hums. “It looks like the fae folk are having at it out in that forest.”

Almost instantly, it fills you with a spitting anger. The wilds in the moor are your responsibility. Does she know that? Is she saying that you’re responsible?

“Hold your tongue, Miss Aradia,” you say, scowling at her. “Even I don’t know what’s happening to my woods.”

Then, her piercing eyes find you. Briefly, they reflect what light shows through the downpour outside. It makes you shake your head side to side. A phantom. “You never wondered why the ground is scorched the way it is?” She asks. “Why some of the animals keep dying? Why the spirit is so quiet, and the birds falling like hail from the trees?”

Her tone is eerie, and you back up from where you had been leaning forward.

“What…” you try, and find your voice croaking. A creaking doom is sinking into your awareness. She knows something. The something you didn’t know about, something that was hiding. The things you’ve been trying to push down, the things you’ve been decidedly not worrying about. Mayhaps they didn’t involve you at all, or maybe they were surrounding you the whole time.

Karkat said not to think of it, but what if he was wrong?

Dirk’s disappearance has your mind flitting to all corners of its prison, like a fish in a net. _He’s all you have left of your brother_ , speaks a whisper along the shell of your ear. _You swore to protect him._

“What are you saying?” you ask, and Miss Aradia reaches her hand under the countertop. From beneath, she pulls a shallow saucer. Inside of it is a perfect circle of foamy milk.

“I’m saying you’re not from around here,” she murmurs, tone gentling. “So maybe you aren’t exactly familiar with the fae folk.”

“The what?”

Aradia lifts a hand, silencing you. “They have their wars, just like us, Miss Rose.”

You won’t be silenced. “I’ve been here a long, long time, Miss Aradia,” you tell her. It’s almost scolding, offended. How dare she imply that you do not know something about your own home.

“My people have been as well,” she replies. Her finger draws a circle in the saucer of milk, and then she pops it into her mouth. “The fae war over decades, not months or years. They blight crops, cause famine, spread disease.”

It doesn’t feel real. Something could affect that much, that’s not a god? On this little rainy island?

“What is your point,” you ask. You’re embarrassed. This can’t be true. But she lives here. She must know.

“Well. There is one person in this town that has only the barest traces of iron or silver in her house,” Miss Aradia says. It perturbs you. She’s still speaking in riddles. All of this fae nonsense is a complete mystery to you.

“I still don’t understand!” you say, angrily. “What are you saying?”

“Fae folk feed on milk and honey left on the doorstep. They blight crops and forests. They live under great hills, and they count every grain of salt cast before them,” she continues, swirling her finger in the milk again. Oh. This must be her fae trap of some sort. But you’re still annoyed. What does all of this have to do with Dirk’s whereabouts?

“So you say Dirk was spirited away by these creatures?” you ask, and Aradia freezes.

“They are not simple creatures, Miss Rose,” she murmurs. Her wide burgundy eyes flicker down toward the counter, toward her hand in the milk. “They will not be trifled with.”

“Please just give me an answer,” you beg of her.

And finally, she does.

“The Folk are burned by iron,” she says.

“And?” you ask. There is little to do with this information.

“They took your little boy away from you,” she says. It stings. “And Miss Maryam only uses ivory scissors.”

 

* * *

 

Back at the cottage, you sit on the floor. And heave. Your hem is a foot deep in mud, your boots are damp inside and out. A million thoughts are going through your head at once.

All of the herbs? All the beauty, and not seeming to age? All the ways she seems to float, all the strange occurrences and the uncannily perfect fit of her gowns she makes? And the way she noticed the focus necklace, so… acute.

The way that when she touches your skin, you feel your common sense disappear. You attributed it to… lovesickness. What else? What magic could possibly affect you?

Why were you so blind?

Before you left the shop, Miss Aradia told you more things. More things that made you want to rip yourself from your foothold and scramble into the nearest tree.

She told you of the way Fae folk can disguise themselves to look human, to look like whatever they wish. That they are immortal beings; that they do not grow or age naturally, only in power. The Folk can give you food of their world, and trap you in a bond. They will try to lure you, try to make you theirs. Often, they’ll steal children and replace them with changelings. And once in their world, you cannot leave.

She told you that they would trap you in an endless dance, an endless quest for affection and sensuality.

That they would consume you.

That they can be seen through a stone’s eye.

Like your focus stone from your childhood.

You grip your hair, try to stop the shallow breaths that keep coming and going from you. _No!_ You need to get past this.

Her coy mannerisms, the fact that she seems totally disinterested in material wealth.

The way her eyes almost reflect the firelight. Like Jaspers. But Jaspers is alright with her. Isn’t he?

The nanny goat isn’t.

The goat screams and _screams_ at Kanaya Maryam.

All humans age, except for you. And Miss Maryam.

And her origin! Where is she from? Always, she refuses to divulge it. Even the first time you saw her, she didn’t say. You met her on the street, and she picked you out of the crowd, asking you what material your dress was made of.

You didn’t know.

Something strikes you deeply, and you recoil onto yourself. Vomit roils in the back of your throat.

The tea.

You’ve been drinking her tea.

What if she’s trapped you in a bond? What if you’ve been lied to, this whole time? Was last night the last straw she needed to make it so that you could not escape?

This whole time.

You thought you were so _careful_.

A quick knock comes at the door, scaring away whatever remains of your wits.

“Rose!” Karkat’s voice comes, urgent and worried. “Rose, your magic is going crazy, are you okay?!”

You stand, gasping breaths, and hurry to open the door.

Karkat pushes it the rest of the way open, holding you by your shoulders as he elbows into your space. Brows drawn, nose wrinkling and tongue flicking out to test the air. Yellow and red eyes dart around the room, cautious. He senses only fear from you, no danger.

“What happened?” he asks, a good deal more calm. His skin ripples with scales and the undercurrent of emberfire. His foot kicks the door shut, and you can only breathe when your wards reset themselves after him.

You’re not sure at all how to put it into words.

“She…”

“She?! Who, Rose?” he asks, eyes bearing down into yours. “Who?”

“Miss Megido says that Kanaya Maryam is… fae.”

Karkat’s eyes dim. Now his face is unreadable. It’s as good of a tell as any. You find yourself struggling from him in an instant, shaking his claws off of your upper arms, bearing down on the heels of your feet and bracing.

“So it’s true!” you gasp, fear thundering once more through your chest.

Betrayal moves like wildfire in your heart.

Karkat knows something. Everyone knows something, but you! Everyone!

Worse than the darkest betrayals, is being out of knowledge. And when Dirk is in danger!

“Don’t listen to that villager,” Karkat tries, quietly. But he’s not meeting your eyes. “She’s just some ignorant farmer’s daughter, that’s all.”

You step back one pace, then two, and then three.

“Dirk is missing!” you exclaim, voice hoarse. It breaks against your teeth like waves. The panic is crashing within you, sending your mind into whirls and waves of doubt and suspicion. “Dirk!”

Karkat’s eyes go briefly wide, and then they narrow as he flinches. He knows the name of this child; he knows the names of all the children. His teeth bare themselves to you, and his nostrils flare as he snorts out a plume of smoke. “You know I care about the child, but it is…”

Karkat isn’t one to doubt his own convictions, but here, he puzzles. His expression is still unreadable, and his jaw is tighter than a piano string. Something instinctual and mournful is piercing his veil of focus - his veil of secrecy.

Lightning cracks and thunder crashes outside. Rain pounds on the roof and your clothes are so cold, and damp. It’s dark and quiet in the cottage. Not even the walls creak.

“Kanaya is no harm to you,” he says, after what feels like eons.

He remains standing where he is, as you leave.

Once more you turn to spy on him over your shoulder. To catch maybe even a glance of sympathy? All you get is the clenching of his thick brow, and the glisten of what might be frustration in his eyes.

“If you try to harm her, I may stop you,” he nearly mumbles. A mumble, from Karkat! “For your own safety, Rose.”

And he stares at the floor, hard as a statue, as you close the door behind you.

 

* * *

 

You arrive once more, dripping, hands shaking, in the shop of Miss Aradia Megido.

Her floors are pristine as before, and the mop still has not dried in the corner.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

There are no doubts in you as you stare her down, unforgiving and solid.

“How do I snare one of these Folk?” you ask.

Your fear for your long descended nephew overwhelms your suspicion of the slowly widening smile on Megido’s face.

And she pulls out an old wooden box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey yall!!! some drama 8) 
> 
> happy new year and i hope everyone had a beautiful holiday season! i love you all dearly, as usual feedback is appreciated and please have an excellent weekend! <3 <3 <3


	12. Linaria Bipartita

The next day, you wake early.

The few hours of sleep you got were dense, fraught with neither nightmares nor dreams. You simply slept, and then awoke. But you were acutely aware of the passage of time.

Within you, The Horror stirs. Her fingers flex around your soul, and she looks about to see what you’re doing. She has said nothing of your plans to capture Kanaya. She’s barely acknowledged the plan at all, or anything else you’ve done in the past few days. You sense she is watching. Waiting.

Karkat, still awake, sits mere inches away from the rolling fire of the hearth. The dawn appears bright, despite the coat of melted frost you can see over the window. He looks up at you. A log in front of him shifts and falls, showering his open hands with sparks.

“You’re really going to try,” he murmurs.

“He is Dave’s direct descendent,” you snap at him, like a crocodile closing on its prey. “He is family.”

He says something that burns you.

“But, being so far descended… is he?” he asks the fire.

“He looks just like Dave,” you say, riling up, “Dave’s daughter, so long ago – “

“He is not your brother, Rose.”

You don’t answer him. He may do as he wishes. Attempting to stop you would be futile using the normal means, but he has it well within his power and natural prowess to put you down if he sees fit. Fortunately for you, Karkat doesn’t want to put you down. You can see it in his eyes; you can see the frustration and the feelings warring against one another.

But you _must_ do something.

It is true that Dirk is not your brother. But a direct descendent of Dave’s… and he looks so much like him. And you can _feel_ Dirk like your own flesh and blood.

“The day Dirk was born, I birthed him,” you whisper, to nothing and the entire room at once. “I held the boy in my arms.”

“Rose, stop.”

“And within him I felt the same energy that I lost when Dave died,” you say. It has felt like so many times you’ve thought this. Karkat must think you mad, for saying such a thing. He thinks that Dirk simply has magic; common, in the descendent of a witch. But no. His soul echoed with the same vibrations as Dave’s. Your twin, your match and fitting complement. Dave.

Karkat just… scowls.

Jaspers neither mewls at the door, nor at you. He does nothing, staring between the two of you with his ears flicking to and fro and tail swishing. Prepared. Agitated. He can sense the tension.

“I have no plans of harming her,” you say, looking toward the door. The cold metal of your milking pail is dry in your fingertips. “But if she has harmed Dirk, she will get what she has coming.”

Karkat says… nothing.

Unsurprisingly. All according to plan.

The worst parts of yourself are emerging. In your desperation to keep these last vestiges of your family, you are resuming old habits.  
If only you had liquor left in the still. Maybe it could blur the harsh wall of glass you feel building between you… and everyone else.

 

* * *

 

Karkat doesn’t come gathering with you.

All’s well with that. Your basket fills easily today.  
A jar of earth from the scorched circle closest to your home. Several stalks of wild golden wheat, just dying off. A small abandoned beehive, almost exactly the right size for making your five candles. A few stems of rue have sprouted by the path, and you’ve snatched them up before you can think.

A piece of coal from your fire will do nicely for drawing your circle, and you can fetch the basil and rosemary you need from your herb garden.

The shell of a long-gone moth goes into your spare jar, with it a short white feather you find on the path.

The trip doesn’t take long at all.

Avoiding the hill in the forest cuts your walk in half. A bramble catches on your forehead, as you take a more unused route. It scratches. You pay it little heed, but the stinging on your skin lingers like a dream.

Karkat is in your cold box beneath your house when you get back. He pulls up a few bottles of milk for himself, and everything he needs to make some goat’s milk butter. For his trip back, you’d agreed to allow him use of your food stores, as you had entirely too much. The trust that he still has in you twinges in the back of your throat.

Despite him attempting to tell you what you should do.

You’ve never been one to accept orders from another.

Not from your father, from Karkat, from the women in the village on their fashion customs. Not Dave, who never bothered to order you around in the first place. Not even Roxanne, your surrogate mother, who taught you most everything you know.

You remember what it felt like to think that you knew everything when you stowed away on that rough ship back in your youth. You remember thinking that the flow of magic through your fingers would always feel like sand, and that the bare grip you had on it was as good as it would get.

And like that time, you have learnt better.

Kana… Maryam.

Maryam is your enemy now.

She has stolen your only link to your past.

She has lied to you, betrayed you to keep what she is a secret.

And she has made a _fool_ of you.

You will not be a fool again.

The worn old rug in your sitting room is cast aside, rolled quickly to sit out of the way and shoved beneath the couch. Furniture is pushed to the sides, and books are laid out, spines supine and worn out from centuries of use. They each are open to a different page you need. Even your own personal notebook.

It unfolds with a cloud of dust and ash, more than a hundred years gone between sessions of opening the cracked wax pages. The ink within is still pristine as the last occasion you had to open it. And the leather cover stretches beautifully with every movement.

The page you open it to is a fine, intricate sigil.

It will span nearly five feet across.

The basis for the markings is still scarred into your floor, from the time you had enacted your spell for youth and vitality. The center is burnt wickedly, and there is a stain of old and dried blood wrought into the grooves. The Horror writhes happily at the memory.

This spell won’t be near as difficult.

Drawing the sigil on is easy. Karkat lingers in the doorway as you make line after line.

The outline of the existing sigil is traced, and then within it, you go almost into a trance as you etch sigil after sigil with the section of sharpened coal from the forest. Great swooping rounds come into view as if you’ve done this a thousand times before. Power sinks into each crevice, each grain of black.  
After the coal comes the knife.

The knife carves away slivers of stone, curved blade dragging harshly against the crumbling floor. Each gap in a tile, each crack, is connected with smaller pieces, and more charcoal. And each hole is made a line. By the end of it, you’re exhausted. Your hands are filthy, face sweating and marked with coal absently wiped from busy hands.

Before you know it, you’re staring at a finished pentagram.

It _reeks_ of containment, and you haven’t even put the proper enchantments on yet.

Karkat sighs from the doorway, defeated.

It makes you wince and want to cry.

He goes along, grabbing your churn and your backed stool. And he leaves the house, dropping an air of pure disappointment behind him. He’ll be inside for the ritual itself. Nothing in the world would be worth seeing you hurt, at all. So he’ll protect you if it comes to it. Against all of his better wishes.

 

* * *

 

By the time you’ve washed and finished melting the wax for your candles, crushing the comb into pulp after cutting off the valuable bits, it’s evening. The rug is back to covering the floor.

You’ve not eaten, not had more than a bit of crystallized honey to chew on.

Outside, near the garden, your friend churns and churns and churns his cream, hissing occasionally at the noisy goat, and stopping occasionally to shoo Jaspers, who is very eager to see what waits inside the depths of the cream. Karkat finished two batches already, and is onto his third. Butter will last longer than milk over the winter, as well. He’s making enough for both of you. Looks like there was more in there than you thought.

There goes that twinge again, in your heart.

You’re straining the candle wax, and squeezing out the bits, when a knock comes at the door.

Odd.

And when you open it, who else could it be besides Kanaya Maryam.

Past her, Karkat watches you with wary eyes. He’s still seated in the garden.

And Maryam looks confused.

But endeared, and oblivious. Her smile is kind and gentle, and there is love in her eyes.

When you step back, letting her in and apologizing for the mess, you wonder how long you’ve been taking that look for the truth. How long were you allowing her to make you feel young, to make you feel pretty? How long did you believe that warmth in her beautiful face?

“I’ve come for the last of the dyes,” she says, a trickle of laughter in her voice. “For your gown.”

Oh. You’d forgotten about the gown.

Thankfully, you had already prepared the dyes for it.

Maryam draws a hand down your arm, and it makes you shiver. Makes you want for more of that touch.

But no! You shan’t. There’s magic there, magic trying to keep you with her. Forever. And you will not be controlled. You will not be captured, and kept. And you must save your nephew.

Drawing the box of dyes off the shelf, you proceed to pick out hers, and push them through the mouth of a small cotton bag. Just for her. “My apologies for my mood today,” you tell her, being careful not to touch her skin as you tie the strings of the sack and place it in her fingers. “It was a rough night.”

Lie, lie.

All of it, lies.

It burns your throat, softens your brow. Your poker face was always the worst. But you must keep up the charade, just one day longer. The spell will be ready, tomorrow.

“That’s alright,” Maryam murmurs. Her voice is comfort, like freshly fallen snow and a sun-warmed blanket. It aches.

The tips of her fingers are… strangely green.

You must keep your eyes on them too long, as she begins to laugh. She’s standing close to you now, lifting her fingers to examine them yourself. “I kept them in the dye bath for a slight too long,” she says. And it almost makes you smile. How like her, you want to think.

How like her to be so clumsy.

Maryam reaches out with her small satchel of payment, placing it in your waiting hand like a promise.

And for but a second, you allow your wrists to touch.

In that second, the chimes ring out of turn, and the fluttering of a million separate hummingbirds dilutes the severity of the day, and you breathe a sigh. Endlessly you want to enjoy her, to stay with her joy. But Megido said… she told you of the wickedness of Maryam’s kind.

Yet you cannot part from her.

You cannot make yourself detach, you’re so much in love with this woman.

The thought splits your heart.

For that second, you want to waste away, and let your suspicion depart from your conscious mind.

“My Rose,” you hear, and you open your eyes. You hadn’t even noticed that they were closed.

“My Rose,” Kanaya whispers again, “My sweet, sweet Rose.”

Kanaya steps closer to you, and frames your chin with her hands. Her eyes are so beautiful, her lashes crystalline against the yellowing sunset sky. Her hair is so ebony, like onyx, and her lips are so plump and soft.

“Yes?” you answer.

And she smiles.

“I just,” she stammers, leaning into you.

The dyes are forgotten on the table, and you don’t want to have to care if you drop her money.

“I just cannot wait any longer,” she whispers. And you sigh. Eyes wide with wonderment.

And she kisses you.

So softly, so gently.

Her lips feel like everything you could have possibly wanted out of a kiss. Her mouth is like honey, her skin like a sweet elixir, and she is so perfect like peonies and the sweetness of freesia. The coconut of gorse and the calming of lavender. The heat of another person, so close to you and yet entirely too far away.

But… despite the kiss, you have to know.

Despite the kiss, you cannot help but notice the blight that leads up the path to the village every time you close your eyes. You cannot un-imagine Dirk’s shouts of pain and surprise, his cries for help as he’s dragged off into the forest.

Kanaya parts her lips from yours, breathless and grinning.

“Will you come by tomorrow, at noon?” You ask her.

She nods.

And like a lady, she leaves you there, in your kitchen.

One tear sliding down your face.

You have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!!!! hope everyone is having a good weekend and i hope you have a great week ahead of you!!! the next chapter is *eyes emoji* hahahah
> 
> love yall!


	13. Lobelia

All night, you remain awake. Preparing your ritual.

Karkat almost excuses himself, but chooses to stay, despite the distaste on his face. He helps you set it up, assists you in making the least mistakes possible.

Once the sun goes down, Karkat helps to draw you a small bath in a pot over the stove. He fetches your purest salt-and-lye soap from the magnolia box below your bed. He washes your back, which you cannot reach, all the while muttering about what a horrendous idea this is.

“I won’t hurt her,” you say. “Unless she hurts me first.”

“It’s not you hurting her that I am concerned about,” he tells you. “It’s you hurting yourself.”

Every word from his mouth stings.

You attempt to change the subject as he assists you in garbing. He doesn’t have to, but he chooses to. It’s a white chemise, and a long white robe over it.

“The moon is high tonight,” you say. “Perfect for magic.”

“If you harm her, you will be the first to suffer,” Karkat says. “And it will not be by my hand.”

It makes you flinch.

You still know not what she is. You haven’t the slightest what kind of being she is, or how fickle she might be. According to Megido, the fae are temperamental, and powerful. They do not tolerate being harmed.

If you fail, it might be the last thing you do.

After saying those last words, Karkat says nothing.

Not for hours.

All of the candles are then set out. At the five corners of the pentacle, they stand, and will be moved. Also in these corners, you place five identical bowls. Into one, you take your pestle and crush the wheat. Into another, you gently lay the moth and the feather. The third houses the burnt earth. The fourth is simple, just whole sprigs of rosemary and basil, from your garden.

Lastly, you carefully dry the rue blossoms next to the fire. A spell helps to quicken the process. Just something easy, and mild. Once dried, you make them into a strong rue tea, which you daren’t drink any of. And you very carefully pour it into the last vessel.

The sun is risen by the time you are done with the elements of your snare.

Karkat sits in the corner, silent.

His teeth are audibly grinding, but he says nothing to you.

Before the pentacle, you stand in your white and your ashen feet. You face the east, where both the sun and the moon rise. You take a deep breath, closing your eyes and harnessing down your magic. It tethers to your cold, bare toes. It creeps from the base of your spine, attaching itself to you in feelers. Karkat shifts. He can see it, you know. He’s told you how terrifying it is, before.

The feelers are like ivy, crawling into the crevices of your body and skin, wrapping themselves about you like they’re finally at home. It took you decades of practice to finally be able to do this, to focus it so solidly for rituals. And you almost never use it.

When you speak, your voice rises just as your own.

“We are Rose – Warda – daughter of three,” you say confidently into the air.

The magic directs its attention toward you. Not just your own magic, but the magic of the hills, of the minor plants in the forest. The water running miles below you. The descending moon even glances at you for a moment, as you stare into the near-green blinding ascent of the sun.

You raise your right arm above your head.

“In balance with the sun, and stars,” you murmur.

The magic shifts.

You slide your arms down along your front, to point four fingers at the ground.

“The land and her bounty.”

You raise your left arm, to point toward the east, before you.

“The moon and her vigil.”

You raise your right arm, again.

“And the powers of the realms of people, and the Horror.”

Your right hand finds its way to lay over your heart. The pulsing agitation of your magic lies amidst a circling creature of excitement, with no legs, mouth, or eyes, yet all of the sense it needs to know it’s in for a juicy treat.

“Forever, as long as we shall live,” you finish.

Karkat hisses somewhere to your left as the circle on the floor briefly radiates energy. You squint, and focus as much as you can on the auras and beings around you. Your voice, for that last line, echoed with the boiling, slithering mass of your Horror.

Kneeling, you place the tips of all ten of your fingers on the trap you’ve laid.

Something unseen whips out, tearing a paper-thin line from each of your hands. The lines seep blood, just enough to touch the outermost line of your circle, and then they close themselves up. Something here is still writhing.

Of course. The lamb to slaughter. So that Kanaya might not just be taken by the powers in this circle.

You step into the circle, toeing carefully around your coal lines and your bowls. Each of the bowls is poured into a heap in the center. First, the moth, and last, the rue. On top of those, you pour the bottle of old wine. And above all, you hold out your hand.

“Take from me the sacrifice,” you say. You know it won’t be too much.

A slice of air whips out, and a cut opens along your palm.

From it drips a stream of blood.

It takes a good several minutes to bleed itself properly, but once the spell is done taking what it will, it closes the wound again for you. Convenient. All of this you spread around with your foot in the center, painting the grime to each of the innermost corners. Spellwork is messy.

Karkat breathes a sigh of relief after your recklessness.

And you step out of the circle.

Jaspers, who has been watching the ordeal with calm interest, meows.

“You reckless, abhorrent monster,” Karkat is growling at you, even as he walks up to you, checking to make sure you’re okay.

Karkat sits you down, and throws a rag at your face.

“You’re going to really fuck this up,” he snarls, “But if you want to find out the hard way, so be it.”

You clean off your feet as Karkat leaves, slamming the door behind him.

It’s closer to noon, now. Not a lot of time.

You get dressed in normal clothes, and try to ignore all of the warning signs in your head. All of those white flags your brain wants you to take, all of those easy pathways you could still turn toward. All of the forgiveness you wouldn’t have to ask.

But it has to be done.

After you’re dressed, boots and all, you move the ritual candles to their same corners, but in different parts of the cottage. They’ll be less noticeable that way. And you shove the rug back over the pentacle, to keep it hidden.

By the time you’re done cleaning up entirely, and your ritual bowls are stowed and hidden, a knock comes at the door.

So.

It’s time.

 

* * *

 

Kanaya talks with you pleasantly after giving you a single, gentle kiss on the cheek. She looks apprehensive of you bringing her here, but when you pull out the teacups and pull the boiling kettle off the stove, she looks pacified. A disguise of having tea that has been maintained.

It’s... it’s difficult, convincing yourself that you have to carry this out.

As Kanaya steps across the room, footsteps light and waving her hands as she talks, it’s almost as if time slows down.

Karkat is disappointed in you. He doesn’t think you’ll be able to do it. And he’s not here. But… the least amount of people to suffer from the resulting explosion, should you fail. Just in case all of your consecutive circles weren’t enough. And just in case your magic isn’t strong enough, for this.

You haven’t slept, so what if you lose focus?

What if she escapes?

And… the biggest question.

What if she’s actually trapped?

Your greatest fleeting hope is that when you perform the command, nothing will happen. The magic in the room will cling to nothing, and she will simply be confused. If that’s the case, your nephew is still missing… but… she won’t be some terrible creature.

Karkat walks in just as Kanaya is stepping into the circle, teacup in hand, and smile on her face.

She turns to say hello to him.

And you kick back the corner of the rug, place your toe on it, and snap your fingers.

Kanaya’s smile turns wretchedly betrayed. As the single conjured iron chain wraps thrice around her, you watch her face go from happy to horrified.

It worked.

Karkat is frozen by the door. His arm is outstretched, and his face is frozen as if he had to stifle a shouted protest. Crestfallen, eyebrows drawn and disappointed.

“Dave would not approve, Rose,” he says.

“Good thing he’s dead,” you retort.

And it physically hurts. Like you’ve allowed your heart to splinter.

 _ **Why have I been trapped?!**_ a voice booms. Jaspers yowls as if kicked, sprinting from the house.

Your ears pop, and Karkat whines, crushing his hands over the sides of his head.

Looking back to Kanaya, you see…

You do not know what it is.

Before you is the image of Kanaya, beautiful and pristine and wearing the high-collared dress that outlines her neck oh so well. But behind her… oh.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Tall, with four hands reaching from its torso, and hooves at the end of its feet. It has twelve eyes like a goat’s, pupil a line across the center. At the end of each of its twenty fingers is a beautiful white claw, and its fingers are long and slender. Her whole frame hangs like a willow tree, hair descending in a sheath from her forehead to the ground behind her.

And in that hair, you can see the night sky.

“I…” you choke. You fall to your knees.

The wings expanding behind it are more luminous than the morning sun shining through dew on the petals of the most extraordinary flower.

“You are… “

“I am [______],” her great, many-toothed mouth says. And the crystalline antlers on her head shake. “Queen of [_____].”

“Now tell me, Rose,” it says. And your name comes out of both mouths, ethereal and human, as they move at once, and it comes out with so much love and feeling woven into the single syllable. “Why did you trap me?”

With that, the image of the creature disappears. The glamour resets itself, and you see the woman you fell in love with in front of you.

And she looks at you with tears spilling over her eyes.

What have you done?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey yall! time for a good ol' update! hope everyone has an excellent weekend and are in good health this flu season! love ya and i appreciate feedback, it helps me know how im doing or how people are liking the progress!


	14. Angrec

“Where is Dirk?” you demand, without anything stopping it from coming out.

The glamoured image of Kanaya frowns. It’s not an angry frown, at your insistence, or a sad frown, at being found out. It’s not disappointed in you, or malicious at your failure, or wicked. It shows none of the bright, dangerous laughter you were warned about by Megido. The display of classic ‘fae’ attitude that you’ve been told of is gone. Confusion is the only thing you can see.

It’s hard to remember she isn’t human.

“Did you take him to the faerie mound?” you say, badly accented, clumsy and delirious with panic.

She can’t hurt you from in there. But is it just for show? She is clearly powerful, and much more powerful than you. The horror whispers that fae is not more powerful than herself, and that your body would be safe. But you have little faith in that.

Dust rises from the floor and flutters through the sunbeams barely entering your home.

The – the fae would have you strung up. This is their… their queen.

Kanaya, at the mention of the world of faerie, turns like a lance to point at Karkat.

He scowls deeply.

“I didn’t tell a single human soul,” he protests, in response to the glare he receives. Something must happen, because he kneels, clutching his head. “I kept my word, [_____]! Stop being so goddamn _loud_!”

Kanaya looks back at you, and Karkat sighs out a heavy gasp as he’s removed from the brunt of her anger.

In her pain, and in her wrath, she is powerful. Intolerant. Beautiful and majestic and terrifying.

“You know what I am,” Kanaya says.

Her eyes are so green where they touch yours. Her face is crying and mournful and desperate, soft and fragile but at the same time, she is an angel ready to strike out and smite. For a few bare seconds, it’s like her skin is once more bark, and her hair descends beyond even the floor. Each of her eyelashes a crystalline spiderweb, shining with the morning dew.

There’s a compulsion in the air to reply. It tears at your throat, pulling your hair until you choke out.

“Yes,” you say. Karkat snarls.

“I am just… hiding here,” Kanaya murmurs. “Not harming a single creature.” The chains around her rattle as she shifts, but can’t move from the spot. Her tears have not stopped. Like an everlasting overflow of water around the most beautiful aqueduct imaginable. 

You feel uneasy. An oil slick courses nausea through your gut, and guilt wracks your frame.

“…I have only your word, for that,” you say. She still hasn’t answered your question from earlier. About Dirk. But she had looked confused. Does she not know? Were you tricked?

“Do you,” Kanaya says, and then she pauses. A long, pregnant silence spools between you, winding further and further. Blood continues to drip from your hand onto the markings on the floor. They glow faintly, and the air in the room is still.

“Do you fear me?” Kanaya asks. Her voice is like a rock about to fall from a precipice.

“I want to know what you really are,” you try, not meeting her eyes again. You can feel them piercing the side of your head, furious and so, so sad.

“So you trap me?” she asks, fury making itself known once more. “Like a monster?”

It’s like a whip on your cheek, stinging and taking a moment to really set in the pain. Your lip pulls up, and you step forward to the edge of the circle, nearly spitting out your next words.

“Well, aren’t you?!”

Even Karkat calms his growling at that.

“I suppose some might say so.” When you blink, she’s looking at the floor. The tears have stopped falling, and her fists are clenched.

Instead of victorious, or knowing, or righteous, at this finding, you just feel… cowed. Like a piece of your soul has broken off, and begun to drift away on the air. The guilt makes you feel defensive and horrible. Like a scolded child, like you’ve broken the urn of a loved one while playing with the family dog.

“You lied to me,” you bite out, and Kanaya does look apologetic at that one. But it feels like acid from your lips. Does she deserve any of this, really?

You’re a hypocrite. She’s not the only one who lies.

Karkat… he knew. He knew what she was. And he said she wasn’t a danger to you, or the town. Or at least it was implied. Everything is starting to line up in the worst way.

“I am sorry,” Kanaya says softly. “I couldn’t have anyone know who I was.”

Despite wanting to calm down, however, you continue to spit poison at her. Her submission to your questions only increases your fury and self loathing. It comes unbidden, like decades of pent up vengeance and anger, just needing a direction. It’s horrible, and unfair, and you can’t even hope to make it stop.

“Where is Dirk?!” you nearly shout at her.

She just looks confused again. Instead of properly offended by your words, or struck, all she shows is confusion.

“I did not take him, Rose,” she says. Simple as that. You almost believe her. In fact, it’s so sincere that you take a step back, feeling a punch to the gut. It makes you lash out.

Instead of taking her word for it, you lift your hand. Kanaya’s eyes widen, and you clamp all four of your fingers into your scabbed palm, splitting the skin and spilling intent of interrogation onto the circle. The Horror laps up your emotions hungrily, and lets a tiny amount of her power trickle into the stream.

Kanaya gasps.

“I didn’t take him!” she cries out, and the frustration and heartbreak and pain on her face make another piece of your soul sail. “I am so sorry I lied to you, but I don’t know where he is!”

“Are you causing the blight on the forest?!” you shout at her, tears of your own gathering into your eyes.

“Yes!” She says. “I’m so sorry!”

The stones bite your knees as you crumple to the ground.

The chain dissipates into thin air with an unusual pop, so as disappears a bud to a bloom.

Karkat lets out a heavy breath, running forward to catch Kanaya as she stumbles down to her knees, as well, head falling into her hands.

“You blighted…” you gasp, not able to meet the eyes of anyone in the room. There’s a miasma of crippling shame. “…the forest?”

You’re. You’re so sorry.

You… hurt her. It was never… you never wanted to hurt her. But it’s your home, your place of living and where you have sworn to protect and linger. There’s a horrible battle in your skull, a gruesome duel of compulsion and moral ambiguity. It’s your duty, and she…

If she hadn’t been guilty of anything…

How much of a monster would that make you, instead?

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats. Kanaya leans into Karkat, not even daring to look at you. “My negligence toward my throne, and my people, has allowed this trouble to happen.”

So she’s not guilty directly. She didn’t cause it. And the guilt becomes so much in you, and the magic drain clenches around your heart. Scrambling, you stumble to your feet and lean over the sink, vomiting into the drain. What have you done, indeed.

The sun laughs at you, cold.

“I am one of the Folk, yes,” Kanaya whispers, once you’ve collapsed, shaking, onto the cabinet door that houses the water pipes. “I am the queen of what you would call the Seelie court.”

You say nothing, still obsessing over yourself. Over Dirk. Dirk isn’t under Kanaya’s control. So where is he? Where did he go …does Megido have him? Did he simply get kidnapped? But there was no sign of struggle. The townsfolk said he had simply just walked off. Or did they? And you’ve become something you hate, in the name of someone you love.

Dave would be ashamed.

The long night is bearing down on you.

The daylight’s claws sink into your flesh, dragging strips of skin from you, laying bare your hubris and embarrassment and regret.

“I am trying to keep the village safe, Rose,” Kanaya is saying. Karkat is telling her that she needn’t tell you anything, that she was imprisoned and pained unjustly. But she pushes him aside. You turn your head as much as you can to look at her, and you see Karkat scratch his claws through the circle, and run to tip over the five candles so the wax might extinguish itself. “But the signs in the forest show that the kingdom is ready for me to inherit the court, and that the forest is ready for me to return.”

“Why… did you leave?” you ask, hoarse. If she took the freedom as opportunity to end you, it would not be a shock.

“I was hiding,” she says. Plaintively. “From my family, my responsibilities, and my people.”

It’s not unlike royalty, from what you’ve heard. Dodging responsibility, wanting a break from the politics and bloodshed. But even considering her ignominy, you still can’t meet her eyes. You hear footsteps, and then you see a pair of dust-laden boots enter your vision.

“I am so sorry about your nephew, Rose.”

Kanaya… her voice is so sweet. She is such a powerful being, and surely she could just strike you down right here. But she isn’t doing it. And she’s speaking to you gently, like you’re worthy of forgiveness. Of anyone’s forgiveness.

When you still don’t say anything, Kanaya kneels in front of you. Then, you can see her skirts, and the beautiful fabric being muddled by the layer of dust on your floor. You’re so tired. The Horror nods within you, sitting back on her haunches. She’s been satisfied by something in this past few days. Did she take some energy from you, as well?

Watching you fall from pride fed her?

“Someone in the village is my enemy,” Kanaya murmurs. Her hands fold on her waist. Karkat mutters something in the background and leaves the room. It scares you when he leaves, and you feel vulnerable. But by what you’ve done, you might deserve to be… abandoned. Finally. “I’m not sure who yet.”

Everything is so heavy.

You can feel your age on your body like each year is a stone, weighing you down.

“They are a member of the[___]…” Kanaya trails off, as if searching for a word. That strange wording, that you can’t quite hear, but comes out as cries and whispers. It makes you a little dizzy. “A member of the unseelie court. They are powerful. They’re draining the forest in order to power their people.”

You might have a suspicion of who it is.

The only other member of the town that knows anything about fae. Megido. She knew what Kanaya was, succeeded so well in turning you to assault someone innocent. That truth spell was powerful, and might have killed you if you had tried it on someone not trapped and stronger than Kanaya.

“There’s a box,” you croak.

Kanaya makes a confused noise.

But you can’t move, for some reason. You’re completely paralyzed. You shoot her a pleading, desperate look. A dash of light passes over her face, and it’s as if her tears from earlier never existed.

“A box that should be beneath the sink, wooden,” you try again. Kanaya gently turns you, and searches in the cabinet. Her hands are so soft and generous, and she so very obviously means you no harm. Oh, what, oh what have you _done_?

Ruining the only love you’ve found?

Love.

As if you could deserve love.

Kanaya fishes out the small chest, and opens it. You blindly feel around in it, pulling from it jars of several different sizes. One by one. Beneath the bottom layer of thin glass vessels, you find it.

A watching sigil, just like the one you had found in that ball of twine, so long ago. But this one is much stronger, the runes accented and burned so carefully, and printed on what you now suspect is human skin.

“Aradia Megido gave me this box,” you whisper. You’re so tired. You throw the sigil into the fire as Kanaya looks on, horrified. Aradia will have known what you’ve been doing, and what your habits are. How often Kanaya visits, and when, and why.

She will know of today, if she was watching.

Kanaya’s eyes, when you meet them, are wet. They’re green like the brightest emeralds, beautiful and true and honest and so lovely.

“I’m so sorry, Kanaya,” you say, scraping any amount of sincerity you can from your heart.

Kanaya reaches out from where she kneels, and draws her fingers along your face. Both of her hands cup your cheeks, and she tries to smile. “I forgive you.”

With those three words, you feel yourself sink. This one, this one that you’ve wanted for so long like a moth to a flame. She is powerful and ancient, and nothing is a secret between you, now.

“I’m sorry I hid my magic from you,” you tell her.

“Shush,” she replies. “I always knew.”

And you close your eyes, exhausted, and you feel yourself weep.

Gossamer lips touch your own.

And the sky grows dark with rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry this chapter was so late!!! ive had a lot going on with work and going on a trip, and i wanted to also say thank you for both your patronage and for every single comment i recieve. I love yall, and i hope you have a fantastic end of the month


	15. Asphodel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i know it's been awhile, and my life is kind of in chaos, but ive been inspired to write some angsty rose-centric chapters, and something with happiness too, so be ready! (for whenever i get them posted) and enjoy!

You.

You’re still you.

Your hands are full of stars, each one larger than the last. 

There is no sky, no black swath upon which they sit. There is no moon watching you, and observing your every move and flexion of magic. There is no… there is no Horror either, no being within your soul, tendrils wrapped about your heart. There is no Earth, no ground below or air within. There is just you, and the stars  
.   
There are a million that you can see there, in your cupped palms. Your nails are pristine, free of coal and dirt. Your skin shows no signs of… age. None, at all.

Just next to the base of your pinky finger, you catch a glimpse of something. It is like many things, and nothing at all. It hovers around one little red star, floating on an orbital precipice. When you lean your head in closer to your hands, you can almost dip your nose into the surface of the universe. 

It’s cool, you find, and smells like a new river after a long day of rain  
.   
Taking a deep breath, you plunge your face in to your ears. 

And you fall for a long, long time. 

But you don’t wake. There’s no falling rush, only the insistent swimming toward that little everything in the blip of the wake of many stars. 

It comes closer, and closer, and you can see it. 

All of the stars but one disappear. 

The thing, against the pink of your palm, is as a shadow, but more like an object than a silhouette of light. Solid, heavy, full of purpose. It’s a writhing mass, terrifying and full of teeth and eyes. It’s one of multitudes, you suddenly know. It’s a very small part of millions of beings just like it. 

It _i_ s.

It drifts along in the eternal circulation of this star. Millions of years pass. So many days you would not even comprehend it. The thing does. 

And after so many millenia, so many countless hours spent adrift, it notices something like it. It feels a pulse, an infant, beginning on a rock not too far away. Its interest is… piqued. It stretches out one feeler to the planet, with its many fingers and shadows and pulses of many-colored light. 

And the planet, in its infancy, reaches back out to it.

The being that circles the star recoils, but not out of disgust or fear. Shock, surprise, _love._

And it bundles up a part of itself. It ties it into many thousands of knots, and rips the tendril from its own mass, and pushes that smaller piece toward the rock. Toward the infant, to feed it. To help it grow. 

Your focus is caught by the rock. Why is this rock special? Why are none of the other nearby rocks producing this same fetus of potential? 

The infant in your palm grows, flourishes. It splits itself into many pieces, scattering itself across the rock, delving into the oceans and making home on the lands and in the trees and plains and deserts. Finding crevasses and volcanos and planting itself down. 

The being that circles the star, it… leaves. 

And the rock is there. 

The last thing you see is a butterfly, fluttering along until it crashes into one of the pools of shadow and potential. And the butterfly transforms, latching itself to the shadow. Though stretched thin between each other, they form a bond. 

That girl’s name is-- 

_Wake._

 

When you come to, there is no Kanaya. Where she was, there is a blank space in your line of sight. Suddenly not there. And you have no idea where you stand with her, as you rise to sitting in your bed. Your head is pounding like a hammer to steel. Continuous, unrelenting, nauseating.

You have no idea where her loyalties will be now, whether or not she'll welcome you again into her heart, nothing. She said that she understood, but.

Did she? Truly?

A thick fog of doubt pervades your senses, and you find yourself at a loss. 

The wings of the butterfly, as you sit there on that cold and unremarkable morning, are shriveled and dead. Your magic is weak from the ritual, despite the satisfied rumbling of the Horror in the pit of your stomach, and the relief at finally knowing the truth. Kanaya is...

It sinks in a bit more.

Karkat's footsteps sound like claws clicking along the floorboards. They stop before your door.   
He knew, too. But you don't blame him for keeping her identity a secret. Magic must stick to other magic and trust, for without the trusted few you would be so dearly alone in the world.

Kanaya is

Fae.

"Sidhe" Karkat murmurs. One glowing ember of an eye pokes its light through the crack of the door. You beckon him in, and you swear you can see relief cross his features. Relief at being forgiven, maybe?

You would never not forgive karkat. He is your family.

"What was that?" you ask, rubbing the sleep from your eyes with carefully firm fingertips. "She what?"

Karkat sighs, rolls his eyes, and sits on the bed. You feel his intent from here, light and curious and concerned. He checks the insides of your wrists, and seems satisfied when he finds them healed of all gouges. "Not 'she'. Sihde."

The accent is hard to pick up, hitting the tip of your ear like a light brush of meaning. It sounds... uh. "Irish?" you ask him. Karkat looks proud to know you. What a funny contrast to the previous day. 

To him as he is to you; you’re family.

"Yes, in fact," he says, and his breath is hot as it fans from his nose across your hand. Today he smells like bone cinders. Iron and fingernail dust and ash.

"The Irish were the first, I believe, to give them a title in your human languages. So that is the name they will have to me," Karkat continues on. "Knowledge of them is secret and sacred, even to the people nearest them. Like the old women who practice the folklore and the ladies who sing about the death of the unborn across the moor."

Karkat helps you to your feet. "Even to us. For despite being everywhere, they are few, they are ancient, and they are very old."

Talking is difficult. You can't make it come out, anymore. It feels almost like if you spoke, it would come a croak and not speech. So you choose not to make a sound. Instead, you give him a simple nod.

Karkat half-carries you to the front room. "They have passageways through sacred places into our world." he explains. And ah. That makes sense. "...and though they have power like a minor god and do not age, beings made from pure light, mischief and wonder, they are mortal enough to be wounded into death. With iron."

Oh.

So the chains were the right choice. All of this is sounding familiar to you. Did you know this before?

"Kanaya has given me permission to tell you anything about them you want to know," Karkat says. He lingers at your side after setting you down in your chair by the fire, and then pours you a cup of tea. It stinks, as any rejuvenating tea should. It probably tastes worse.

When Karkat speaks next, there's a kind of crunching hesitation in his manner of speaking. It's unusual for him. "She..."

He leaves it there.

You nearly ask him "what?"

_What can I do?_

"She said that she wishes, if it suits you, that you would give her some time." Karkat says. "She is going to pack up her shop."

It’s... what you were expecting. 

But... it still hurts. After that, after what you did to her? It's what you deserve. Trapped her, endangered her life, lied and deceived and took advantage of her kindness and passivity to assume terrible things and then. You acted on them. Kanaya wanting space away from you is what you should give her. As you will.

So you nod. That's it.

It's fair.

Karkat sits, himself, gravel grinding in his bones as he plops himself down beside you.

"She wanted you to know that she still doesn't blame you, though," he finishes.

And it's okay.

Life will continue without her. However long she needs, you will give it.

Even if she does blame you.

It's what she needs. And you will have a gap there, where once was a person. But if one day she will have you again, that is enough.

"I searched for Dirk again," Karkat adds.

"Mm," you hum. Dirk is still gone. The impact of that idea hasn't quite hit you yet, today.

"I could not find him," comes the murmur from next to you. A clawed hand uses your chair for leverage as he stands, and wraps a second blanket around your own shoulders. You hadn't even noticed were shivering. Kanaya drained a lot of your magic for that seal to work even a little on her. "But I did find a trace of him at the shop. A piece of fabric from his clothes. With that, and some hair from his pillow at his family house?"

There's a question on the end there. And yes. of course you can do a scrying with that much. You won't ask how karkat got the hair from the house, or how long it took him to find that scrap of fabric, or how exactly he knew it was the boy's shirt.

You just nod an affirmative, staring into the warm, warm hearth. In there, you can almost feel Dave, chiding you back from a rough night. Complaining about his studies. Making you tea. And then in the hearth, as well, you see Kanaya's smile against the sunlight. It hurts.

"Will you need to go to the sea? Will you be strong enough by tomorrow night to See?" Karkat asks in quick succession. Both receive a nod. "The moon will be full by that time. It will be a bright moon, light enough to see by."

You nod again.

A tear burns in your eye.

Dirk. Ignore Kanaya while she needs it, and find Dirk. She needs to do what she needs to do. And you will give her space.

It takes several tries, but eventually you're able to turn your hissing breathing into a voice, and then a question.

"What time did she leave?" you ask Karkat. Your voice is scratchy and feels like ice creeping out of your throat. Like slime and tar.

Karkat's annoyed expression is visible even in his voice. "You don't remember?"

"No." you reply, short and simple.

"You fainted," he says, and after a pause, sighs. "She carried you to the bed. You woke briefly to apologize, several times. She told you to quiet and rest. And then you slept for twenty hours."

"Ah."

"Are you hungry?" he asks.

You just stare into the fire, and even as Jaspers jumps into your lap, you daren’t move.

"No."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my beta is no longer able to edit chapters for me, and I'm looking for a new one! Just someone to edit for simple mistakes, as well as tell me if something like dialogue or whatever sounds weird. hmu if youre interested :) and i hope everyone of yall have a great weekend! <3


	16. Iris

As promised, the next evening brings you out to scry at the cliffside by the ocean.

The air feels chaotic. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s restless spirits, or the war hidden within the trees. Deep inside them, there is a dark cave. Winding through patches of darkness and light, thorns and brambles, frightened hares and broken leaves, there is a sense of dread. Something is going to change soon; you don’t know what exactly, but you can smell it in the air.

Your runes are heavy in your hand, sparking with the wild and uncontrolled magic that seeps like static through your hair and clothes. The sky is looming, a dark, dark grey that looks like rain, and the wind across the sea is biting cold on your nose and cheeks.

Karkat is frowning even as he fits his hands about your waist to lift you up to the stone dais upon which you will scry. You’ll See your nephew today, even if the spirits decide to bring you to your knees. That very well may happen, due to the strength you’re having to split between keeping your spells aloft and tethered to yourself, and your recovery.

For some reason, the Horror still lies dormant. Usually when you venture to the ocean, she has a moment to commune with the spirits that cast themselves against the cliffs, and her usual growling of competition and wariness at being away from her forest center. A spritz of her power flies to your soul, fueling the magic you’ll perform, but otherwise she is uncharacteristically quiet.

Getting a firm grip on the edge of the stone tablet before you, you stare down into the smooth dip in the rock. It’s surprisingly clean.

Everything is odd, today.

Notions of more dangerous magic flit about your head, but you shake them off. Not the time for all of that.

“Let’s get this over with,” Karkat growls. “It smells like hail.”

Absently, you cast a few runes into the basin. Only the ones for future and standstill come up, both upside down.

“Snow is what I’d guess,” you say, just before a flake hits you in the nose.

The sun has ceased to light the sky, and you can feel the moon as she rises behind you. The runes are back in your hand before you know what you’re doing. Karkat stands on the other side of the basin from you, shielding them from the wind. In his black eyes you catch your own reflection - your pupils glow with a strong yellow light.

“What is it we are going to ask them?” you say, and it comes out… strangely celestial. This hasn’t happened for quite some time. Your magic is being reckless, pulsing in needy waves and jumps and starts. Yesterday… definitely took a lot out of you.

“Dirk’s whereabouts are a mystery to us,” Karkat intones before you. Even as he shields the wind, it stings your eyes. “I ask if he is safe, and where he is.”

When you answer, the words slip unbidden from your mouth. You let them control you, even as the tips of your fingers turn silver. This can’t continue for long. And then when you arrive home, you’ll need to do a lot of stabilizing. You’ll have to ask Karkat to draw a circle around your bed tonight. But you must find him. It’s the only thing you can do now to redeem yourself.

“Your question is heard,” you hear yourself say, in a voice unlike your own.

Karkat frowns but doesn’t stop you.

Your hand moves again, this time a little in your control as you drop a combination of energy and stone and fabric and hair into the rock.

It does something a little peculiar.

There are but three runes that don’t immediately flip face-down, but they don’t quite seem to land, either. The stones spin in place momentarily in the basin. For some reason that makes you want to vomit. Karkat hisses, and you continue to hold your hand over the bowl until each has ceased its movement.

The ones that are face-up are Eihwaz, Mannuz, and… Raido?

“What are they?” Karkat asks. To you, the runes shine brightly from their engravings, almost blindingly. It hurts. To him, they might as well be fish scales.

“The first two are Safety and Female,” you mutter, pointing. “That would be to answer the first half of your question, and to point to Aradia, which we already know.”

The last rune begins to glow a sickly green, then a vibrant white, then a beautiful royal purple, and it makes your head hurt. Visions of flowers overcome everything in your line of sight. Karkat nods an affirmative, leaning forward over the bowl to get in your face.

“And the last?” he asks, quickly. You wave a hand at him to back off. In his true fashion, he does not, in fact, back away in any show of respect.

Rubbing at your temple with fingers icy cold from the wind and flurries of snow, you try to blink away the Seeing. It doesn’t work at all. The rune is plastered to your mind, sewn into the backs of your eyelids.

“Journey!” you snap. “It means journey! But I don’t understand… I don’t know what it means.”

Karkat, now, leans back.

“He’s far away, that much is true,” you say, trying to take in a deep breath. Karkat is moving up behind you, but you keep Scrying, pry open your eyelids and staring into the bright florals and dancing lights and fire and truth and, and, you see it. A dark room, a corner of a stone building with bars on it, bars made of twisting golden vines. There is the ripped shirt, and the puddle of tears and waste on the ground. You see a pale little hand and curled blonde, and, and and –

Karkat pulls you back from the stone.

“No!” you say, clawing at his hands, “I almost had it! I almost saw him!”

“Rose, you’re going to kill yourself,” Karkat says, calmly. And even as he holds you to him, you struggle. His arms are strong and warm, but they’re the most painful prison at the moment. “I know where he is, anyway. We can’t get to him.”

_No!_

_”I can do it, just let me find him!”_ you shriek, reaching out toward your stones and the rocks and the sea.

“He is in the realm of faerie,” Karkat says.

Your struggle persists, despite his firm claws and the distance growing between you and the dais.

“We aren’t getting him back, not by searching ourselves.”

Karkat’s words make you finally go limp, and you lean back against him. He holds you up, walks over to a boulder and puts your hands against it. Holding yourself up is difficult as he retrieves your stones. The Journey rune stares at you from inside your head. That little pale hand.

The visions are leaving you now, piece by piece. They fade like ink into water, the tattered pages of your mind doing the best to hold the pigment, but ultimately, failing.

“Aradia was in the town. We can try to trace her from there,” Karkat soothes you, as he returns.

He places the bag of stones in your pocket, their soft leather casing like a sword into your heart.

Karkat lifts you, a hand under your knees, and a hand below your shoulders. The two of you lift off with a heavy beating of leathery wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! got a wild hair for writing again! sorry for the short chapter, but it felt completed where it was! i hope everyone is having a great week <3


	17. Ivy

The signs of unrest in the forest have yet to settle. It’s been three days since you _Saw_ Dirk, and you’ve been sleeping or stabilizing your magic, nearly bedridden, for half of that time. A persistent headache throbs at your temples.

“Is she gone from town yet?” you ask Karkat, as he walks beside you with your shopping basket over one of his arms. With the work building up in the last day - sorting the herbs Karkat has been bringing you, along with cutting a few unexpected sachets (you had to have Karkat make some new rabbit leather string for you) – you haven’t had opportunity to visit town. Nor have you had the chance to see where that fiend Aradia ghosted off to.

Karkat snorts out a puff of smoke, softly, shifting the pipe in his lips. The pipe is empty, of course. He knows how you loathe the scent of tobacco. But with the tension lately, it’s harder for him to suppress some of his plumes. It’s been helpful to have him around for a few days, as you recover. Last night he told you that he’ll need to go, soon, claiming he has an appointment set with a Djinn he knows. The Djinn may be able to help with the search as well, the only reason he’s keeping the meeting in his nebulous schedule.

“I know that she’s closed up shop,” he says, and you have to force yourself to unclench your jaw. “But other than that, I know about as much as you.”

You get the feeling he’s intentionally leaving out information, but you don’t press it.

“Well. Hopefully we won’t cross paths,” you mutter, and he huffs like he gets it.

Kanaya hasn’t said that she’s had enough space, yet. That, as well as your horrific problem with mounting guilt, and your proclivity for avoiding others who you’ve wronged, has made you dread seeing her again.

It’s a little difficult for you to ever admit that you’ve done something wrong. The coming apology (or lack thereof) will be mountainous.

You’re only going to town for the exercise, and to deliver a few late spell orders from the locals. One for the butcher, for food rot that has seen a spike in the last several days. Another for Dirk’s family, for calm and safety. Several others as well, for various townsfolk who are going back to superstition with the recent bout of people fallen ill for a few days at a time, and the crack that’s formed in the square fountain, and the water that they swear has run red late in the night, and so on and so forth.

You know the water will not have run red…

_Yet…_

People will feel safer with protection sachets hung near the door. You will feel safer, as well.

They came after Dirk, to shock you and bring attention from Kanaya’s sharp eyes, you assume. To throw a rock in the wheels. What’s to say they won’t try to kidnap you, next? If you disappear, there will be no one protecting your forest, or the town.

As you cross the bridge into town, a small girl runs up to you. It’s a curious thing; usually the children stay away from you, and you’re grateful for it. But it’s the little English child, you see as she approaches.

“Do you have the spell?” she asks, eagerly. There’s no humor in her voice.

_It’s much too serious for a child._

“Yes, I was going to bring it by,” you reply. Gesturing to Karkat prompts him to retrieve the spell from the basket in his arms. A little bundle, a bag, a piece of silver, and an amethyst. “What’s got you glum?”

The girl takes the spell in her hands, frowning down at it.

“Me mam,” she says. “Sick.”

No good feelings come to you from that sentence. “How sick, small one?”

The girl takes a step away, clutching the magic in her palms, near enough to crush the fragile dried twigs inside. You reach out a hand as if to stop her, and she flinches. The motion makes you feel ill.

“She was crying, and bleeding a lot,” she replies. Her brow twitches up in the middle. “She said that the baby was gone.”

You didn’t even know there was a baby. Her, a child? Maude? She was long away from her husband, you thought. Was it out of wedlock? How long had it been since her husband had left? Clearly she was okay, since she was still alive, or the girl would be in tears. Or more than that.

“I’m so sorry,” Karkat says, and before she can move, or you can say anything further, he gets down on his knees. Once he’s at the girl’s level, he places a hand on her forehead, stroking it back through what he can reach of her windblown nest of hair. His palm glows for but a second, and you have no idea what he’s doing. “We’ll be by later to check on her.”

The girl makes a little face of relief, and scampers off with the spell in her hand.

“What did you do?” you ask him.

Karkat makes a face as he stands back up. His hand clenches, as if pained, and he bends over to retrieve the basket.

“I opened her bond to her mother’s comfort,” he says. His feet scuff the ground as he continues along the path. You might never understand quite what his magic does. You know that dragons each have peculiar abilities, but they must be specialized, unlike yours.

“Alright,” you say, instead of asking any more questions. It’s easy to trust Karkat to not tell you some things. Maybe he did that to you, too, but he seems kinder than to manipulate you. Hm.

Catching up with him is easier than any day in the past week, but Karkat yet slows his pace so that you might walk together.

“I think fish might be our best bet this morning,” you say when you’re beside him once more.

“Some to cook for tonight, and some to smoke for the next few days?” Karkat asks.

You hum an affirmative. Grains for bread, some fish, a bit of hard cheese and a container of dried fruit. Maybe a head of cabbage or two, as well.

Karkat begins to talk about the weather, about how it snowed for a few minutes the other day. You reply in kind, and the two of you manage to keep the conversation going for maybe ten more minutes as you cross the streets. Deliver spells first, then get supplies.

It’s sooner than you think it will be, but it happens.

Almost as soon as you get to the main market road, after finishing spell delivery and receiving several payments as well, you see her.

Kanaya stands on the stoop of her shop, directing a young man from the shop next door on how to dismantle her sign. He stands on a short ladder, and she holds it up, to support him, and points.

She’s beautiful today.

Karkat tugs on your arm, but you just can’t drag your eyes away.

Kanaya’s hair is swept up in a tight chignon, but a few curls drape about her face. The rolls of silk behind her only add to her beauty, making her green eyes seem to sparkle in the sunlight, and her dark skirts stand out all lovely and tailored against the color of the grass beside her. A rush of joy and desire and love stifles your breath. Your heart pounds, and your head feels like it might jump off your shoulders.

And you want to kiss her.

Oh, so badly do you want to kiss her back.

She apparently once felt that way. Why? How? How could she think so much of you?

Did she ever gaze at you in the same way you adored her, from afar?

Kanaya’s mouth is smiling, saying some undoubtedly amusing anecdote to the man helping her with the shop. Her chin turns, and you forget to look away before it’s too late.

Your eyes meet, across the bustling street, and you sigh.

Kanaya stares at you, speaking grin gone once more. Her face softens, and half of her mouth twitches back upward in a hesitant smile. For the first time since Karkat said it, you believe, somehow, that you are forgiven. But _how?_ How could it be alright, if you made this lovely girl so unhappy?

Even from this far away, you can make out a soft little bandage around her wrist. Did something happen? For anyone else, you would think that they had injured themself in the moving and packing process. But her? She doesn’t get harmed by simple slips of the hand, or trips and tumbles.

Concern flashes through you, and she must see it, because her smile turns sad, instead of just a little welcoming.

Karkat pulls a little more insistently at your left thumb, digging a claw into the tip to better get your attention. With a hiss and a wince, you whip your hand away from him, fixing him with an annoyed glare.

“Come on. She will still need time,” he says, eyes burning a message of patience into your skull. “There are a lot of things for the Queen of Sidhe to take care of.”

Looking down at the ground, not even bothering to cast around once more, to glimpse her maybe just in the corner of your eye, you sigh.

“Yes, I suppose,” you reply. Standing straight, you decide to shoulder through the market crowd. She needs space, needs to take control of things again. It’s not a world you belong in, at all. A world full of ribbons of light and laughter like fractured stained glass. A world of poise, cruelty, and in her case, sovereignty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry about the long wait! i still intend to finish this beat, and im working on getting back to more regular writing! some stuff went haywire, and my beta had to finish her school year (she graduated! yaaaaay!!!!) and so yes things are trying to reassert themselves haha
> 
> but yes i hope you enjoyed and as always i love yall and hope you have fortuitous weekends and months ahead. oh and happy pride!! <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> if there's anything you'd like to see or if you wanna talk to me or anything, my tumblr is royalrastafariannaynays!


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